Stanley Fish: internet anonymity should not be protected as free speech

deleuze · 2011-01-04T22:26:02-05:00

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/anonymity-and-the-dark-side-of-the-internet/?hp Thought this was interesting. One of the things that is attractive about these message boards is their "id" character. Anything goes--so you can see, perhaps, what people are actually thinking instead of what they really say. On the other hand, this is also what drives me crazy about these boards. What say you people? Is Fish right? Should we crack down on anonymous speech in this new medium?

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15 years ago 01/05/2011 2:29pm EST

re: Mr. Obvious

Mr. Obvious wrote:I am not OK with holding the Brojos responsible for the content of my speech, or your speech on this website. They are not responsible. I am. You are. Holding the Brojo's responsible seems like holding the owner of a printing press responsible for liable, rather then the author of a work.

Okay, I think I agree with everything you said before this paragraph (just wanted to say that so it doesn't appear that I am ignoring the good points you are making.)

I think I even agree with this paragraph, but the analogy confuses me. We are talking about cases in which the author is actually anonymous, so they cannot be held responsible for liable. Should the folks who made the choice to create those conditions of anonymity then be held responsible? My guess is that you say no. I'd probably say no, too, at least not entirely.

But it seems there is a certain precedent for this. You might not hold them fully responsible, but responsible as an accessory because they created a situation that they new could (and a reasonable person might even say would eventually) be exploited. Sort of like a reckless endangerment charge.

Maybe?

I dunno--I feel like I am losing steam with these arguments.

15 years ago 01/05/2011 4:17pm EST

re: deleuze

deleuze wrote:
Okay, I think I agree with everything you said before this paragraph (just wanted to say that so it doesn't appear that I am ignoring the good points you are making.)
I think I even agree with this paragraph, but the analogy confuses me. We are talking about cases in which the author is actually anonymous, so they cannot be held responsible for liable. Should the folks who made the choice to create those conditions of anonymity then be held responsible? My guess is that you say no. I'd probably say no, too, at least not entirely.
But it seems there is a certain precedent for this. You might not hold them fully responsible, but responsible as an accessory because they created a situation that they new could (and a reasonable person might even say would eventually) be exploited. Sort of like a reckless endangerment charge.
Maybe?
I dunno--I feel like I am losing steam with these arguments.

I appreciate that. You are a reasonable poster and this is a good/interesting discussion, so I am more than willing to continue to participate. You are making good points as well.

I think you are pushing on some issues that I might really have to think hard about. I just have some preliminary, scattered thoughts at the moment.

They are providing a platform. In some ways this could be analagous to P-2-P software providers being charged and/or shut down because they have created a medium for illegal activity. I'm not sure about this. Seems if the site was named Letsslander.com then maybe you could hold the providers of the platform responsible, but since an internet forum has lots and lots of legitimate uses and is not inherently tied to slander it seems that there is not a good reason to hold the platform provider responsible.

As far as where the platform provider's responsibility ends, again, I'm not 100% sure. Perhaps use my analogy of a printing press owner (not an editor or publisher) and author. Where does the printing press owner responsibility end if they have published an anonymous work? I think that at the most they could be forced under subpoena to reveal the author. Maybe, I don't know if that is correct or not. So perhaps an owner could be forced to turn over a log of IP addresses under subpoena. I think if the law was changed to this, though, most providers would simply stop logging the identifying information. Seems there is some sort of precedent for that with yahoo or google or somebody but I can't remember?

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