Your House of Represtatives passed this:

] If a defendant who is convicted of a felony offense
] (other than offense of which an element is the false
] registration of a domain name) knowingly falsely
] registered a domain name and knowingly used that domain
] name in the course of that offense, the maximum
] imprisonment otherwise provided by law for that offense
] shall be doubled or increased by 7 years, whichever is
] less.

Doubled. How many aggravating factors in sentencing DOUBLE the sentence? This seems extremely overzealous. But that's not what really pisses me off. What really pisses me off is this section:

] (a) Free Speech and Press- Nothing in this title
] shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or of
] the press for activities related to the registration or
] use of domain names.

What the hell does this mean? I've never seen a section like this in any law I've ever read.

Are they trying to say that this law doesn't supercede the first amendment? They're damn right it doesn't! The U.S. House does not have the authority to pass bills by majority vote that supercede the first amendment!

So what does this mean? The fact that you say that "nothing in this title shall... diminish any rights of free speech" doesn't make it so! This bill is an attempt to scare people into publicly registering their official name, address, and phone number when they engage in SPEECH activity on the internet! The only way to avoid first amendment implications is to not pass this into law!

Are they thinking that this line will shield this law from being declared unconstitutional?! You can't just undo the constitution and claim its alright because you say that's not what you're doing!!!

The fact is that this bill was written in bad faith, advocated in bad faith, and passed in bad faith. These people know full well that this requirement is not necessary, not useful, and has significant implications for the first amendment, and they've included this wording in hopes of weasling out of the consequences of that.

They've sold out one of the most basic fundamental rights protected in our system of government in exchange for 10-20 thousand dollar campaign donations from media industries who find that buying Congress Persons is cheaper then the cost of filing subpoenas when they prosecute someone.

Disgusting.

(BTW, Marsha Blackburn co-sponsored this piece of crap. Update: Actually, FOIST was attached to the original bill as an amendment prior to passage. Blackburn cosponsored the original bill, but not the amendment. That honor goes to Lamar Smith and the abominable Howard Berman who wants to make it legal for the RIAA to hack into your computer.)

(ABTW, This section of this bill is called TITLE II FRAUDULENT ONLINE IDENTITY SANCTIONS. Or the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Title. From now all I'll be referring to this thing as FOIST.)

Infuriating - H.R. 3632 Intellectual Property Protection and Courts Amendments Act of 2004