Georgia Legislation - Remailer Effect???

[Lou Zirko <lzirko@isdn.net>]

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T have included copy of text from c/net about a bill passed in the 
Georgia legislature.  It would definately impact remailer service.  
Location of the remailers might fall in with the Arkansas (or was it 
Tennessee) BBS/Porno case.  The URL is at:

http://www.cnet.com/Content/News/Files/0,16,1144,00.html

Article follows
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Georgia OKs "Net Police" law

                By Rose Aguilar
                April 19, 1996, 5 p.m. PST 

                A bill signed into law this week by Georgia Governor 
Zell Miller has sparked yet another firestorm
                over what role the government should take in curbing 
the Internet and whether legislators are
                sufficiently techno-savvy to make considered judgments. 

                House Bill 1630 was introduced on February 8 by Georgia 
House of Representatives member Don
                Parsons (R-Marietta). The bill makes it illegal to 
falsely identify yourself or place a registered
                trademark or logo on your home page. The bill also 
makes it illegal for email users to have addresses
                that don't include their own names. 

                For example, an individual who sets up a site that 
gives the appearance of representing a government
                agency by using a state seal could be sued by the 
state. Also, "vanity" email addresses like
                jackpot@luckynumber.com purchased from a new service 
called VanityMail.com are now illegal in
                the state of Georgia. If someone is sued under the new 
law, the court will decide the penalties. 

                Parsons says he drafted the bill to solve the problem 
of online impersonation. "Back in the winter I
                started hearing about home pages through the news that 
offer remedies and health related services.
                To the untrained eye the pages make it appear that the 
information provided is valid and could be
                some kind of remedy," Parsons said. "After some thought 
and research I decided to present the bill." 

                The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil 
liberties organization devoted to technology-related
                issues, says the bill could undermine one of the 
essential benefits of the Net: the ability to link
                information posted to one site with related information 
posted to another. 

                "The way the bill is written states that you can't put 
a button on your homepage that says, 'Click here
                to go to Wired magazine.'" If Wired is copyrighted I 
would be under violation if I didn't have their
                permission. Instead, I would have to say, 'Click here 
to go to this cool magazine,'" said Shari Steel, a
                staff attorney with the EFF. 

                Parsons retorts back that the foundation is 
misinterpreting the bill. "The EFF is reading something into
                the bill which just isn't there. The bill has nothing 
to do with links. The bill is about using a name or a
                trademark to represent your page as being someone 
else's," he said. 

                The problem is that the wording of the law leaves it 
open to multiple interpretations, according to the
                EFF. "He created a very vague law that could very well 
make everyone on the Internet a criminal,"
                said Steel. Furthermore, the EFF is accusing Parsons of 
introducing the bill to help his employer, Bell
                South, win a lawsuit. 

                Bell South announced this week that it has filed a suit 
against startup company "realpages.com" in a
                battle over domain names on the Internet. Realpages.com 
designs and maintains Web pages for other
                businesses. Bell South, however, has a trademark on the 
term The Real Yellow Pages for its printed
                directories and claims that this extends to a trademark 
on the "realpages.com" domain name for the
                Net. The Baby Bell wants to use "realpages.com" because 
"Realyellowpages.com" is too long. 

                "This [bill] has been masterminded by Bell South. It's 
obvious, considering that the legislator who
                wrote the bill is a Bell South employee," said Stanton 
McCandlish, an online activist with the EFF.
                "This bill would give Bell South the victory that they 
want, but probably aren't going to get in court.
                Bell South is going to lose that case and lose big," he 
said. 

                Parsons confirms that he works for Bell South but 
denies the charge. "The Bell South Corporation
                has no interest in this bill. I don't even think the 
cases are the same," Parsons said. "I put this bill
                together long before that case and they are totally 
separate," he said. 

                Whatever Parsons' motivations, even some other Georgia 
representatives agree that he managed to
                get a bill passed with potential negative repercussions 
for the use of the Internet. 

                "Many legislators are afraid of technology and they 
fear the power of information and the Internet,
                especially the Internet in the power of the voters and 
that's a nationwide problem," said
                Representative Mitchell Kaye (R-Marietta). 

                Kaye is the Web master of a site called the 
Conservative Policy Caucus (CPC), which posts
                information about House activities from the viewpoint 
of the conservative legislative caucus. During
                debate over his bill, Parsons referred to the CPC site 
as an example of one that passes itself off as an
                official government site. 

                Kaye says that Parsons is wrong about the CPC site and 
that it will be unaffected by the bill. But he's
                still concerned about the potential dampening affect 
that it will have on the use of the Internet in
                Georgia. "I'm concerned about the bigger page of the 
Internet," said Kaye. "The bottom line is that
                this is an unconstitutional infringement upon free 
speech and literally puts Georgia in the same
                category as communist China." 

                Ridiculous, says Parsons. "I would never want to 
restrict anybody's freedom of speech, but I believe
                that end users have some right to know who is behind 
what they are looking at," he said. 

                The passage of the law has since sparked conversation 
on Steve Outing's online-news mailing list. 

Copyright =A9 1996 c|net inc. all rights reserved 

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