Internet Identifiers and the constitution

Laws are having a difficult time catching up with the times and when legislators try to create legislation to update them, sometimes their ignorance of technology creates more problems than the laws are intended to solve.

Take for example the change to the definition of “internet identifiers” that will become effective in Florida this coming October. The new law requires registered citizens to register each URL they communicate through… Not every username they post under or every domain name… but every URL.

This very domain; floridaactioncommittee.org, has almost 900 urls. Every posting is a different URL. This article is found at the URL http://floridaactioncommittee.org/internet-identifiers-and-the-constitution, for example. Someone who is a regular contributor to our forum would conceivably have to register hundreds of URLs under the “floridaactioncommittee.org” domain and do so daily, in advance of use, or risk a third degree FELONY!

At the risk of years in jail for innocently forgetting to register a perfectly legal comment in our forum (or simply to avoid the hassle), many registrants will simply elect to forego commenting or contributing to floridaactioncommittee.org and that will dramatically impair our ability to disseminate and exchange information – which is one of our missions.

This is what is called “chilling” free speech and it’s one of the arguments in our Internet Identifier challenge that is forthcoming. Not only will the new laws impede your ability to participate in discussions on our site, but on most any site. For those whose jobs require it (nowadays which jobs don’t) it will impede your ability to work. With social media and electronic communication long having replaced letter writing, it also impedes your ability to communicate with family and friends.

These laws don’t just serve to impede illegal online communication – but ALL online communication. While narrow exceptions are carved out for banking and retail, exceptions are not carved out for familial correspondence, employment or any of the thousands of other reasons someone might want or need to communicate in the modern world.

The new law is so brazen that it expressly states, “including anonymous speech”. So your ability (and constitutional right) to comment anonymously to this article saying ‘you think the law is baloney and legislators are idiots for passing it’ is blown, because you will now have to list your identity and the URL you posted to (and the legislators will teach you not to call them idiots anymore in the form of more frequent “compliance checks” or other retaliation).

Keeping up with the times and crafting laws that are constitutionally sound requires a more than basic understanding of technology, otherwise a floodgate of litigation will inevitably follow.

Stay tuned for an update on our litigation…