From the bluegrass state:

Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal.

The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.

Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

First of all, this is not the same Tim Couch who played quarterback at Kentucky.

Where to begin…

Would his law only apply to domains registered or hosted in Kentucky?  How would the website operators really know whether or the information provided was real?  Would I personally have to research the background of every commenter?  Most importantly, I pay for this domain and web hosting so I should be able to post whatever content I damn well please - regardless of the author.  There is that pesky 1st amendment.

On one level I understand and appreciate what he’s doing.  I personally don’t blog anonymously.  I feel that it “keeps me honest.”  Anonymity brings out typically unpleasant extremes in people.  But it also allows certain people to speak more freely and opens up dialog that might otherwise be restrained.  On balance I’ll take the wild west internet of Mr. Couch’s civilized version.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 5:50 am and is filed under Blogs, Dumbest Legislators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.