HR 1846 (was Re: Blocking email, the complaint)

[Larry Scritchfield]

Peter Murray <PMurray at law.uconn.edu> wrote:
>
>Earlier this month, Dan Lester posted a series of messages about how he 
>was pursued by a Washington, MO, company for including the company's 
>web-based e-mail server in his list of chat, webemail, and game playing 
>sites.  We had a discussion about the implications of this on libraries.
>
>Well, I was searching THOMAS for something else, and ran across the 
>"Who Is E-Mailing Our Kids Act", introduced to the U.S. House of 
>Representatives in May:
>
>  <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.1846.IH:>
>
>It seems to propose that schools and libraries who receive universal 
>service assistance must create policies to block sending anonymous 
>e-mail and anonymous web access.  I am not a lawyer (I don't even play 
>one at work), but I wonder if one would consider web-based e-mail 
>systems (like Yahoo) to be "annonymous" since anyone can create a 
>pseudonym using these services.  In which case, a subset of Dan's list 
>covering web-based e-mail systems might be very important.
>
>In any case, it has been referred to a subcommittee and there doesn't 
>look to be any action on it.  As with most legislation, it'll probably 
>never make it out of subcommittee.  But you never know...
>
>
>Peter
>--
>Peter Murray, Computer Services Librarian              W: 860-570-5233
>University of Connecticut Law School             Hartford, Connecticut
>
>
>------------------------------

The target of the bill seems to me to be NOT "pseudonymous" e-mail
services like mail.yahoo.com, hotmail.com etc. but true anonymizing
services like www.anonymizer.com, www.safeweb.com etc.

Quoting the bill --

`(A) ANONYMOUSLY- The term `anonymously' means--

     `(i) with respect to sending of electronic mail, in a manner that prevents--

          `(I) anyone receiving such mail from accessing the electronic mail address of the sender; or

           `(II) the creation or recording, by the computer used for sending the electronic mail, of a record that the mail was sent, of the content of the mail, of the address to which the mail was sent, or of the time, date, or sender of the mail; and

       `(ii) with respect to accessing the World Wide Web, in a manner that prevents the creation or recording, by the computer used for such access or by the network of which such computer is a part, of any record of the World Wide Web sites accessed by such computer or the identity of the user who, or account that, accessed such web sites.'.

Larry Scritchfield
Internet Services Librarian
Washoe County Library System, Reno NV


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