A resulting bill, known as the Internet Protection Act (IPA), wouldn’t stop with cyberbullying. If it became law, the legislation would also prevent people from posting anonymous criticism of local businesses or making “baseless political attacks,” wrote James Conte, a member of New York’s state assembly and one of the bill’s sponsors.
“With more and more people relying on social media and the Internet to communicate and gather information,” Conte wrote in a statement, “it is imperative that the legislature put into place some type of safeguard to prevent people from using the Internet’s cloak of anonymity to bully our children and make false accusations against local businesses and elected officials.”
IPA was introduced in the New York state legislature earlier this month. The bill would require authors of attack posts to identify themselves when asked or else have their posts removed.
Anonymous posts in blogs and bulletin boards have always been a problem, because they are usually vicious attacks without support and full of lies or misstatements of facts.
Thanks to Greg Sandoval and Cnet.com and thanks for “listening”
Howard