Senate Bill 650, An Analysis

IANAL! And I don't play one on TV, either.

That being said, what follows is my thumbnail analysis of a lot of text. Hope that this is helpful, and if it's not, flames to /dev/null, yeah?

Two parts to the act. There is a lot of material, and it was repeated to the point of unreadability by me, so I decided to do a programmer-kine textual analysis of the differences between the clauses, and came up with this extract, which nobody should trust as a legal opinion. There are most likely mistakes in here somewhere. Trust the original text, although you might find this somewhat helpful to parse and understand it. With a little work, maybe some anti-spam provisions could be slipped in here, but.

	" or with commercial intent towards the person whom the sender
	  currently does not have an arm's length relationship..."

or some such.

My Personal Opinion

As it stands, I feel that this bill needs to be sent back for more work, especially in the realms of making sure that it can't be used to harass people with the "Big Stick" of the Legal system. I would specifically like to see some language to protect third parties such as moderators, and some gratuitous AntiSpam language would be nice.

My Amateur Analysis

The { and } indicate optional parts, with the :abcd indicating which clauses they appear in.

Part 1, "Misdemeanor"

	With intent to frighten, intimidate, threaten, abuse,
	{ or harass }:ab
	another person,

EMAIL

	sends a message to the person on an electronic mail

IRC, ICQ, etc.

	or other computerized communication system

USENET

	 { with the reasonable expectation that the person
	   will receive the message }:bdf

	/* Forging Headers, etc. */
	 { while intentionally preventing or attempting to
	   prevent the disclosure of the sender's own identity; }:ef

	{ and in that message 

		/* ANY person? Hmmm... Even "Sadly Insane"? */
		{ threatens to inflict injury or physical harm to any person
		  or the property of any person; }:b

		OR

		/* No more Email or UseNet posts with the 7 Dirty Words? */
		{ uses any obscene, lewd, or profane language or suggests
		  any lewd or lascivious act; }:cd
	}:bcd

Part 2. Forfeiture

" Whoever does any of the following
" is subject to forfeiture under chapter 712A:

	With intent

	{ to harass, annoy {, or offend[*1]} }:ab
	OR
	{ solely to harass }:cd

	another person,

	{ sends a message }:ab
	OR
	{ sends repeated messages }:cd

	{ to the person }:ac

Email

	on an electronic mail

IRC, ICQ

	or other computerized communication system

Usenet

	{ with the reasonable expectation that the person
	  will receive the message }:bdf

	{ while intentionally preventing or attempting to prevent the
	  disclosure of the sender's own identity; }:ef

	{ and in that message uses any obscene, lewd, or profane language
	  or suggests any lewd or lascivious act; }:ab

[*1 missing from clause e]
Clause f is a "Usenet" version of claues e, but written with the "while intentionally" part first, which is different from the others.

Clause g is distinct:

	g. Knowingly permits or directs another person to send a
	   message prohibited by this section from any computer
	   terminal or other device that is used to send messages
	   on an electronic mail or other computerized
	   communication system and that is under the sender's
	   control."

Seems that this covers the "Harassment by Proxy", but wonder how it affects moderators of Usenet newsgroups?