[Hcoop-discuss] Congressional letter

[Justin Hart]

Dear Honorable Peter Biondi,

I support bill A1327.  Where would our country be, if people like
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay had been able to write
letters under some asinine pseudonym, such as "Publius," that made
outspoken views of even trivial importance to the general public..

Surely, anonymous speech should not be a protected form of speech over
powerful mediums such as newspapers, or even more powerful mediums
such as small Internet forums with incredibly limited audiences.

Sincerely,
Justin Hart

On 3/7/06, Nathan Kennedy <ntk at hcoop.net> wrote:
> Here is a letter I have written to New Jersey Assemblyman Peter Biondi.
> He has introduced a bill which would require any Internet hosts in NJ to
> collect the name and address of anyone posting to forums they host, and
> impose liability for such posts if they do not.  Obviously this is
> completely impractical, and hopefully the state assembly will realize
> this and not make such a ridiculous law.  You may read the bill at:
> http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/Bills/A1500/1327_I1.HTM
>
>
> To the Honorable Peter Biondi,
>
> I am writing to you out of deep concern regarding your bill A1327.  I am
> on the board of HCOOP Inc, a Pennsylvania nonprofit internet hosting
> cooperative which provides a variety of Internet services to its
> members.  While our members come from all over the world, you will be
> pleased to know that our main server is hosted in Secaucus, New Jersey.
> So I thought that perhaps you would like to know what your bill would
> mean for our organization.
>
> The bill would require obtaining the legal name and address of anyone
> posting to a forum hosted on our servers, and impose liability for such
> postings if we did not.  This would require us to cease functioning.
> First, there is absolutely no way of authenticating this information
> even if it were requested.  It would intrude upon the privacy of honest
> users, while doing absolutely nothing to stop those malicious persons
> who wish to anonymously publish defamatory material.  Secondly, it would
> impose this egregious requirement upon all of our members, and force
> them to change their software.  No doubt most of them would instead
> choose to abandon HCOOP for another provider.
>
> You can be sure that if this bill became law in New Jersey, rather than
> expose our organization to liability I would certainly vote in a
> heartbeat to move our servers to a state with more rational Internet
> laws.  As a law student I know it would be irresponsible to do
> otherwise.  Such a law could only mean a mass exodus from New Jersey of
> Internet services and a huge blow to the state's IT sector.
>
> Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
>
> Sincerely,
> Nathan Kennedy
> Secretary, HCOOP Inc.
>
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--
Justin W. Hart