College Being

Kentucky State Representative Tim Couch has filed a bill that would make anonymous online posting illegal, reports SlashDot. More after the jump.

Now, I’m just going to ignore the fact that Couch obviously doesn’t give two shits about free speech; there’s no way this bill could actually be enforced even if it passes, so it’s not really a danger. Instead, I’m just going to ridicule him. I understand that not everyone knows a whole lot about how the Internet works, but you’d think that maybe one of his aides could have pointed out that there are websites on the Internet that are not hosted in eastern Kentucky. As a matter of fact, there are very few websites hosted in eastern Kentucky, because Kentucky sucks ass (sorry, readers who live in Kentucky. To clarify, I’m not sorry about what I said; I’m sorry you live in Kentucky). I’m not entirely sure how Couch thinks that the Kentucky state legislature has the power to regulate the Internet–you know, the same Internet that contains the World Wide Web–but I’d really like to see him try. Am I going to be extradited to Kentucky if I post anonymously on Slashdot? What if we use a fake alias (also known as a “screen name”)? The article reports that Couch’s bill would fine website operators $500 for the first time they allow anonymous posting and $1000 for each time after that. Does that mean collegebeing.com will owe Kentucky money because we allowed “heywood jablome” to post a comment a while back? After all, he’s not technically anonymous, and to the best of my knowledge is name really is Heywood.

None of this, of course, is addressed in Couch’s bill, because he thinks the fact that people can see his Myspace page (and even say mean things without being put in jail!) while he’s in Kentucky means that the state legislature has the power, authority, knowledge, and technology to regulate the Internet. I’m pretty sure this dumbass actually gives Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens a run for his money for the “Worst Governmental Understanding of How Something Works” award.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to post anonymously on a website designed by a guy in California and hosted in Nevada while I download music from computers worldwide via a hash file hosted by a server in Sweden. Suck on that, Kentucky.