It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.
In other words, it’s OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.
The prohibition is in the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act in Section 113, called “Preventing Cyberstalking.” If it is your intent to “annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass” and you don’t disclose your identity, you can be fined or imprisoned for up to 2 years.
Insiders in the
And for some reason, the fact that the “editor” of BlawgReview does not reveal their name is a big deal. What started as a guessing game has now turned into a full scale investigation. On the nonbillablehour, Matt Homann points to a simple whois, which lists American Lawyer Media as the owner of BlawgReview. He goes further and gives the name of “Jennifer Collins” as his guess for the anonymous editor. In his comments, Monica Bay notes that she knows for certain that the editor does not work for ALM. Dead end there.
Over on Real Lawyers Have Blogs, Kevin O’Keefe asks “Blawg Review : Why afraid to disclose identity?” Kevin received an email from the mystery editor asking him some questions, but would not reveal their identity. In a post, Kevin wrote:
I don’t know about you guys but when I get emails asking me to respond with information, I like to know who’s asking. I’d also like to think a lawyer, assuming that’s who they are, who has an opinion, isn’t afraid to stand up behind the opinion and say it’s mine.
What’s the fear in this case?
This resulted in a mini “blog fight”, with supporters of BlawgReview’s anonymity voicing their opinions in comment form. And in true web form, news of the debate spread wide and far. It never turned nasty or mean-spirited, but people took notice and added their opinions.
It seems as if people are annoyed by anonymity itself. Could the mere fact that the BlawgReview editor is anonymous be construed as annoying by the new Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act? It’s a stretch.
Note: After posting this, I noticed an article on Wired entitled “Anonymity Won’t Kill the Internet” by Bruce Schneier. From his article:
In a recent essay, Kevin Kelly warns of the dangers of anonymity. It’s OK in small doses, he maintains, but too much of it is a problem: “(I)n every system that I have seen where anonymity becomes common, the system fails. The recent taint in the honor of Wikipedia stems from the extreme ease which anonymous declarations can be put into a very visible public record. Communities infected with anonymity will either collapse, or shift the anonymous to pseudo-anonymous, as in eBay, where you have a traceable identity behind an invented nickname.”
Kelly has a point, but it comes out all wrong
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