Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Court Orders Site To ID Anonymous Posters
An anonymous reader writes "A Canadian court has ordered
the owners of the FreeDominion.ca to disclose all personal information on eight anonymous posters to the chat site. The
required information includes email and IP addresses. The court ruled that anonymous posters have no reasonable expectation of privacy, a major blow to online free speech in Canada."
I'm behind 7 proxies
I noticed the blogger doesn't mention anything about the case itself. I wonder how knowing the particulars of the case might effect the response of slashdot posters.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Saying something anonymously is not part of that definition.
Anonymous expression has always been a cornerstone of free speech/expression. The only way you can say it's not is to ignore the centuries of western commentary on exactly this subject.
The court ruled that anonymous posters have no reasonable expectation of privacy
I wonder what then the court considers to be a "reasonable expectation of privacy"? Sorry, here or anywhere else, when I click the "post anonymously" button I have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now what they happen to log etc I can understand, but there's an expectation of at least a measure of privacy. If Joe Troll emails /. asking for my IP I expect them to say get lost. But if they get a subpoena I expect them to get the IP. That's where "reasonable" lies in my opinion.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Anonymity has a higher purpose than being used only for hiding behind while making threats/posting illegal activity.
It is one of the foundations of freedom of speech and democracy, allowing citizens to voice their concerns and opinions without fear of prosecution or ridicule.
It reminds us to place principles before personalities, allowing logic to take precedent over emotions.
P.S. It's a bit ironic to hear an admonition to "be brave for once and say what you want in the open" - from an Anonymous Coward. LOL. Good job. Alanis Morrisette would be proud.
Saying something anonymously is not part of that definition.
Common Sense would indicate otherwise.
It's called an anonymous informant and a journalist.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
I must disagree:
You disagree that western political philosophy has anonymous speech as a central part of free speech/expression? Then you'd be disagreeing with reality. One only has to look at the Federalist papers to show you wrong.
western governments have historically ruled against the protection of anonymous speech
Western governments have routinely subverted the teachings of western political philosophy, but that has little bearing on what I said.
however, free speech has traditionally been protected.
Actually you can probably find more rulings against "free speech" than you can "anonymous expression".
On the contrary, the right to privacy and anonymity is one of the base requirements for the existence of free speech. Without a guarantee of privacy, much speech which dissents from the mainstream, identifies graft and corruption, or identifies wrong-doers would be stifled if there were consequences for the speaker. Whether it's a bully stealing lunch money, a contractor putting beach sand in concrete for a building, a tip line for identifying/finding criminals, or a Governor selling a senate seat - the implications of telling the truth which is detrimental to a powerful individual can be a personal risk which is just not tenable.
Yes, privacy can be used for evil; however it is critical that is be available.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Well, except for the fact that one ruling concerning anonymous posters will affect ALL anonymous posters everywhere within Canada.
The Internet is all-or-nothing in this case. If you can prosecute one case of slander and libel, you can prosecute all cases, including "statement critical of the Führer and The Party", which is the scary part of it.
Combine all the efforts underway and you'll see where this is heading. Censorship because of the children, where they lock you up in prison for making the banlist public. Somehow, these banlists always include certain political opponents, but that's just a coincidence. Either way, lock everyone up who questions the Child Porn Ban List, because Children are holy.
Then ID'ing anonymous posters, next forcing webmasters to present ID when setting up a public servers and then we're very very very close to the requirement of having each and all typewriters registered with the Stalinist Party.
This ain't a slippery slope fallacy, because we're already sliding down as we speak, and we're sliding fast. They're already railing up against "unsensible" and "provocating" comments which include pro-catholic, anti-catholic and of course anti-muslim opinions. We have that in Denmark, The Netherlands and the UK already, but it's still only a handful of cases. But as I said, we're having quite a ride on the slippery slope which people have foreseen years ago and were dismissed with Godwin's Law. Well, pessimism can be true sometimes.
What this says to me is that anyone running a service, anonymous or not, needs to be thoughtful about their own data retention policies.
For instance, I might want to keep finer-grained detail for a short while, to assist in troubleshooting or incident handling.
Otherwise, it's probably just fine to keep more terse logs for a longer period of time. My understanding is that you can't be forced to divulge information you simply don't keep, if regular log rotation is part of your usual business process. The point is, it should probably be part of your usual business process, as it's too late to delete once the lawyers are involved.
I often wondered how long it would take the insanity of US & UK to reach us.
Really? Because I often wonder why it happens every goddamn time we elect the Conservatives, and why nobody remembers this the next time.
It sounds like Canada must be married to Australia with this nonsense court ruling. Must we all now go to a public library or internet cafe in order to be able to post anonymously? Somebody should act up and get rude and loud until governments get the message. Freedom of communications is not in the hands of governments to regulate. This freedom belongs only to individuals not to states.