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Re: Court sets standard for online anonymity protections
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 05:00:48 -0500
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 ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- Court sets standard for online anonymity protections David Farber (Mar 02)
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- Re: Court sets standard for online anonymity protections David Farber (Mar 03)