It was a good idea for me to include all those hedges and caveats in my post about being annoying online. Via Balloon Juice, I found this.

Uh, try again. Maybe you guys should read the text of the bill... this is a wildly inaccurate interpretation of the bill, in which the word "annoy" appears not once. The word "annoy" appears in *existing* legislation (Communications Act of 1934) and it does not include any communication a recipient might find annoying. Furthermore, the identity provision is not specified in the amendment discussed. Your article is, indeed, a joke.

I still think it's dumb, since most online communication is very different from talking on the phone, which was apparently what the law was originally applied to. But if the 1934 act didn't cause a crisis, I doubt this will.