{"id":12427,"date":"2012-05-26T15:32:59","date_gmt":"2012-05-26T19:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=12427"},"modified":"2026-04-22T09:38:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T14:38:01","slug":"ludicrous-bill-in-new-york-state-senate-endeavors-to-end-all-anonymous-posting-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2012\/05\/ludicrous-bill-in-new-york-state-senate-endeavors-to-end-all-anonymous-posting-on-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Ludicrous Bill In New York State Senate Endeavors To End All Anonymous Posting On The Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
If the bill passes, get ready to hand over your full name and home address<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You know SOPA and you know CISPA, so you might think you have a good handle on crazy Internet legislation. You might think you\u2019ve seen the crazy stuff, but unless you\u2019ve seen Thomas F. O\u2019Mara\u2019s bill S06779<\/strong>, you ain\u2019t seen nothin\u2019 yet. Currently sitting in the New York State Senate, 6779 proposes that any and all anonymous posts online should be subject to takedown<\/strong> by a webmaster if the anonymous poster refuses to attach their legal name to the post and verify their legal name, IP address, and home address<\/strong>. Luckily, this bill is probably too insane to pass, and definitely too laughably ludicrous to even enforce.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the horrifying text from the bill:<\/span><\/p>\n

A web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP adress, legal name, and home address are accurate. All web site administrators shall have a contact number or e-mail address posted for such removal requests, clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are almost too many things to rip apart in this bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, and most obviously, the amount of information required to \u201cvalidate\u201d an anonymous posts is utterly ridiculous. The bill endeavors to turn literally every account on the Internet capable of posting into the equivalent of a verified Twitter account. Granted, it\u2019s only on a \u201crequest\u201d basis, but if you have been keeping an eye on how DMCA takedown requests have been used, you know full well that request-based, no-questions-asked takedown policies are ripe for abuse. Oh, and they want your home address. Your home address.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Which leads us to the second part of the question; who do you need to verify your legal name, IP address and home address to? The webmaster? Some new regulatory agency? No one in particular? It\u2019s one thing to have a bill that requires Internet users to start handing out their home addresses \u2014 one of the few pieces of information in this day and age that remains somewhat sacred \u2014 but to not specify to who, or guarantee any security is another.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the problem of the IP address, which has been shown to be a totally horrible indication of anything; everyone keeps trying to use them to narrow down specific people. That being the case, it makes a disgusting sort of sense that the same flawed logic be included here as well. It does seem, however, that maybe the bill\u2019s authors know how weak this really is, which might be the reason for the inclusion of a home address to sort of balance things out.<\/span><\/p>\n

And while having to share this kind of information by law is kind of disconcerting in any context, it\u2019s especially troubling in the context of anonymous contents, considering the kind of comments you could probably connect to potential violence are often made anonymously. It\u2019s one (terrible) thing to force people to walk around giving out their home address, it\u2019s an even worse one to do it right as they\u2019re getting into a heated cyber-argument.<\/span><\/p>\n

All that said, you shouldn\u2019t ignore the last little part of that excerpt which states that the administrator\u2019s contact information must be \u201cclearly visible in any sections where comments are posted.\u201d Not only is the web administrator now effectively on-call 24\/7, but you have to find a way to plaster his information practically everywhere. What a nightmare.<\/span><\/p>\n

The upside is that this law, if it were passed by some chance, would be practically impossible to enforce. Most likely, it\u2019s some kind of symbolic push possibly related to cyber-bullying. The result this law would most likely have would be the wholesale elimination of pretty much every comment section everywhere, because who in their right mind would devote the effort and manpower to curating it so closely. Instead, we might see a migration back toward non-persistent anonymous interactions like 4chan, or even chat, like IRC. Of course, we\u2019ll probably never see that happen, because such an insane, loosely-worded and wide reaching bill could never actually pass into law. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Fuente<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know SOPA and you know CISPA, so you might think you have a good handle on crazy Internet legislation. You might think you\u2019ve seen..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,43,187,97],"tags":[229],"class_list":["post-12427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-media-culture","category-science-tech","category-us-news","tag-economic-exploitation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ehh-630-internet-safety-istock-630w_12427_da0af.jpeg?fit=630%2C328&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39499,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427\/revisions\/39499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}