Decius wrote:
] ] "The Government must play a greater role in punishing
] ] those who conceal their identities online, particularly
] ] when they do so in furtherance of a serious federal
] ] criminal offense or in violation of a federally protected
] ] intellectual property right," (Lamar) Smith said at a
] hearing on
] ] the topic today.
]
] Congress wants to make it a federal crime to lie on your
] domain name registration.

The actual bill is even scarier. It's a felony for you to "knowingly [provide] material and misleading false contact information to a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority in registering a domain name used in connection with the online location, or in maintaining or renewing such registration.".

Check out the details of the bill at:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d108:17:./temp/~bdhFqm::

under "Text of Legislation" (which, BTW, it took me _forever_ to find; it's like they're trying to hide these damn things...). If you're really a glutton for high blood pressure, check out the rest of Lamar Smith's civil "services" at

http://lamarsmith.house.gov/

Before starting your own gov't on a small South Pacific island, you can try mailing letters to your congressmen/-women and reps in the House. And, instead of posting angry rebuttals to the not-not sheep here on Memestreams, you might start a petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/create_petition.html) and spread the word about that. Is there anyone with legal experience (Acidus excluded :-) who'd like to tackle it?

RE: Congress Eyes Idiotic Whois Crackdown