Re: Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Ed Gerck [egerck () nma com]
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 3:43 PM
To: Lauren Weinstein
Cc: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP]  Can You Go to Prison for Lying to a Web Site?

Lauren and Dave,

This discussion in IP, and contrary to the Internet, has been very
US-centric. For example, in the UK anyone can use any name at any
time without any  formalities, and no such name is less legally valid.

The Internet is /not/ a special legal jurisdiction. It must follow the
local jurisdiction and each end point -- and, sometimes, at the
originating point. It's that simple. Internet or not, there is a
local law regime that is applied by jurisdiction claims.

Some examples from the non-Internet world:

- Many people use "John Smith" as a name in phone number official
listings in Calif. It's an easy way to achieve anonymity without
paying a fee for an unlisted number.

- Calif. DMV allows motorists to display a postal address in their
licenses, if they so want, which is not their home address.

- Many of us routinely use different letters for our middle name,
for example in magazine subscriptions, as a way to trace who
discloses our names.

- Pseudonym use is also common in arts, politics, and writing, as
Mark Twain for example, and this *is* legal in many jurisdictions
even for commerce and billing purposes. You can even get "pseudo
numbers" for credit cards, linked to you real card, and which work
fine in commerce.

Savvy Internet users prefer to type "xyz whatever" as a mother's
maiden name, or a pet's name, for those sites that insist we
provide a weak password (our mother's true maiden name) to
"protect" our carefully chosen hard-to-guess password.

Most of us (specially as a protection to spam and spammer-generated
names) have more than one email address and not necessarily use
something name-like such as ed () gerck com for all purposes.

The point that still needs to be made here is not about "censoring
the Net" but conforming to local US laws, including the long reach
of federal jurisdiction. In Texas, for example, what is legal in
the UK (see above) is illegal depending on time of use.

Cheers,
Ed Gerck

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