Identifying your posters

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 12:07:59 -0400
> From: Paul Levy <PLEVY () citizen org>
> Subject: Identifying your posters
> To: dave () farber net
>
> Although as you know I spend a great deal of time litigating the First
> Amendment  right to speak anonymously on the Internet, I want you to
> know I accept  your recent announcement that you will usually not agree
> to post communications from persons who refuse to be identified with
> their views, that you will allow communications to remain anonymous only
> when justified in your opinion.
>
> We all recognize that the ability to speak anonymously is sometimes
> needed to protect against retaliation, and for various other reasons.
> On the other hand, anonymity is sometimes abused: people sometimes use
> anonymity to attempt to avoid liability for wrongdoing, or at least to
> prevent hearers from gaining important information that enables the
> hearers to make adverse judgments about the credibility and motives of
> the sender.  When there is no more than a posting to some message board,
> people can simply take the posting for what it is worth, based on the
> content alone, taking the fact that it is anonymous into account.  From
> a First Amendment perspective, the choice to include one's identity is
> a content-related choice that is left to the speaker to make.  And, when
> a motion is made to compel the identification of an anonymous speaker,
> we urge courts to apply a balancing test that depends on the existence
> of a genuine need to know the identity of the speaker in order to pursue
> a valid claim.
>
>         On the other hand, as the operator of a listserv who has his own
> significant reputation, you are entitled to consider whether someone is
> trying to take advantage of your credibility to peddle poison, so to
> speak.  Even though the Communications Decency Act properly protects you
> against liability for forwarding such postings (at least according to
> the Ninth Circuit's recent Batzel v. Cremers decision, in which we
> were amicus curiae), that doesn't prevent you from exercising your own
> editorial judgment about when the speaker has a genuine need for
> anonymity and when your readers are entitled to know whose views are
> being expressed.
>
>
>
>
>
> Paul Alan Levy
> Public Citizen Litigation Group
> 1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
> Washington, D.C. 20009
> (202) 588-1000
> http://www.citizen.org/litigation/litigation.html

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