Forum owners, users and bloggers, here is a proposed law that could have a negative impact on what we do. A bill sponsored by Assemblyman Peter Biondi would require users to reveal personally identifiable information including their legal name and address in order to post in an online forum. Although this proposed bill may only affect forum owners from New Jersey, we need to put a stop to this kind of this before it even starts.

I am not a lawyer (I’ve taken a handful of law classes) but I interpert this law to include bloggers too, because of the comments system used on virtually all blogs.

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/B…500/1327_I1.HTM

2. The operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider shall establish, maintain and enforce a policy to require any information content provider who posts written messages on a public forum website either to be identified by a legal name and address, or to register a legal name and address with the operator of the interactive computer service or the Internet service provider through which the information content provider gains access to the interactive computer service or Internet, as appropriate.

3. An operator of an interactive computer service or an Internet service provider shall establish and maintain reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name and address of an information content provider who posts false or defamatory information about the person on a public forum website.

4. Any person who is damaged by false or defamatory written messages that originate from an information content provider who posts such messages on a public forum website may file suit in Superior Court against an operator or provider that fails to establish, maintain and enforce the policy required pursuant to section 2 of P.L. , c. (C.) (pending before the Legislature as this bill), and may recover compensatory and punitive damages and the cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee, cost of investigation and litigation from such operator or provider.

Why is this bad? First, because people should not have to give out personal information to anyone in order to post on an internet forum.

Here are some very real negative effects:

- a drop in registration rates which results in stunted long-term growth

- additionally difficulty in kickstarting a new forum, allowing un-registered posts would be out of the question
- abuse by individuals who falsely claim libel to get personally identifiable information on an individual to commit a crime against that person

- a less active internet blog community because of disabled comments or simply users who don’t want to give out information to hundreds of blogs

Thats the bad, could there be any good?

- possibly less liability on forum owners if users post damaging “false” information; but thats no guarantee

I’ve started a thread about this on Chris Beasley’s Websitepublisher.net forums, feel free to add your comments either on this blog post or there.

I want to hold back on this until getting more opinions by people who have a little more legal experience than I do. If my conclusions above are correct I believe that we need to take a united approach and spread the word to our blog and forum audiences.