Judge Rules Web Commenter Will Be Unmasked To Mom

LegalReader writes "An Illinois judge has decided that an anonymous commenter on a newspaper website will be unmasked, even though the mother of a teen about whom 'Hipcheck16' allegedly made 'deeply disturbing' comments hasn't yet decided whether to sue over the posting."

Comments

Re:retitled "Court pitches first amendment"

[ConceptJunkie]

Unless you fear retribution for exposing lawbreaking or something similar that actively serves the good of society, there's no good reason for anonymity, and definitely no right to it regardless.

When you publish something in a public space (on someone else's computer, literally their property), I don't see where you have any right to privacy. It might be useful to maintain the privacy of whistleblowers for their own safety, but that's a very, very small subset of anonymous speech.

Frankly, I would never say anything on-line that I wouldn't want associated with my name (even "ConceptJunkie" which isn't very hard to trace to my real identity). But then again, I'm not an idiot who harasses other people's children (I have my own children to harass, thank you very much).