[IP] Re: Court sets standard for online anonymity protections

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Date: March 2, 2009 8:19:47 PM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: labmanager@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [IP] Court sets standard for online anonymity protections

> From: No-Name <labmanager@gmail.com>
>
> Web sites involved in defamation suits are not required to  
> immediately hand over the identities of readers who leave anonymous  
> comments ...

I think (I HOPE!) that this concerned the identities of writers; not  
of the "readers".

(However, is it noteworthy that various law enforcers - foreign adn  
domestic - have demanded that librarians provide information about  
which readers check-out various publications, as well as demanding  
identities of everyone who views or downloads various content that is  
prohibited - somewhere.)

Irregardless, please note that - if (when!) laws DO force disclosure  
of each author of each writing posted online, then web-sites will have  
to remove The Federalist Papers, considered the third-most important  
legal document in the nation, after the Constitution and Declaration  
of Independence!

The writers of those crucial public debates (including the Anti- 
Federalist Papers) did so anonymously, with strong justification at  
the time.

The authorship of those individual papers was never confirmed by their  
writers, although most identities were later alleged by various third  
parties and historians, long after the fact, including by modern  
researchers who used statistical analyses of the writing patterns.

(Will we next have guilt by statistical probability?)

--jim




-------------------------------------------