Tim Couch and Legislation Against Bullying on the Internet; Is This an Old Approach to a New Problem?

So a Kentucky legislator wants to ban anonymous posting online because of "cyberbullying", the usage of the computer to bully, threaten or intimidate individuals or either accept an opinion or concede to an idea they may not necessarily believe in. In fact, bullying via Internet is often a means of trying to demean, invalidate or disrespect those who opinions differ from your own.

Maybe Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, but I wonder if there isn't a deeper issue behind Tim Couch's approach to dealing with this issue. Before we get into that argument, these appears to be a two pronged approach to Tim Couch's proposed legislation, first off you should use your full name anytime you post to a forum online, and the other part of this is in fining website operators who are complicit in enabling people to post anonymously. I'm not sure how that well that would work or even if that is really constitutional either in its implementation or in theory, yet despite the seemingly madness and ignorance of both the fanboys and the site operators, one thing that bunch does know is the law, and the same groups that worked hard against the The Communications Decency Act of 1996 and other laws would be all over this one.

But what of cyberbullying, when we can't even protect our children from being bullied in real life or our young daughters from being bullied in their interpersonal relationships? Is legislation against it a good place to start, or a path of least resistance? Would this contribute to the a cultural erosion of online message boards and fourms or really accomplish the task of pushing the liberties of using the Internet forward?

It would create a safer place, albeit it perhaps a more homogenized and suburban Internet to express one's self but could put us on a slippery slope. Would blogs then be heavily regulated; or even sites like this one in which the government would then begin to dictate to the editors what content producers could or could not write about? Would paid blogs disappear, or what's worse, would blogs themselves have to be registered and tracked?