Irish Senator suggests net users register passport and IP address

A better idea

Every politician should have to pay to make public statements, of any kind. In the comfort of their Parliament building (or whatever it's called locally) it would be free to brain fart all day, among their own kind.

Irish person here. Just to clear things up a little, Senators in Ireland have no real powers. They act purely as advisors to the government. While there are some smart people in the Seanad, there are also plenty of idiots and, as you can imagine, she falls into the latter group. Thankfully, no one with any real power will even bother to consider this.

Charges to the Reg?

How much is my fee for sparking off long threads about Mac/V's MS or one of the interminable penguin fancier noise fests?

After all, if the Reg is gonna charge the punters I ought to get a slice.

Troll icon as a badge of honour for services to the Reg?

Who's charging though? And who's IP address is it?

I understand the idea behind pay-per-post... But who wins there? Is it a government fee? Does the website just pocket it? And since the internet is international, would this mean all websites available in Ireland suddenly need to have credit card facilities?

And just who's passport do you register for a company or school that does NAT and all users share an address? Does the head of the school get dragged off to gaol if little Billy sits down at lunch time and uses the school computers to harass the nerd in his class via Facebook?