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Posting AC - a Thing of the Past?
c0lo writes to point out an article from the Indystar. From the article: "A Marion County judge has ruled, for the first time in Indiana, that news media outlets can be ordered by the court to reveal identifying information about posters to their online forums."
Posting this anonymously
The only reason a court would be gathering such information is to stifle free speech.
Over my dead, bloated body.
To ensure this information is never stored in the first place.
1. People under tyranny
2. Write pamphlets anonymously
3. Make a new country
4. GOTO 1
5. "Goto considered harmful"
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Let's all post AC in protest.
If the website doesn't retain info on anonymous posters, then there's nothing for them to provide. Does Slashdot retain anything?
Who knew?
Random judge, in Indiana, usa, fucking marion county, decides what are the web standards and realities of life on internet ?
Read radical news here
I get tired of people who hide behind AC thinking they can get away with harassment and forum owners who won't take control of the situation. At least this requires a court order, which means the person or group demanding the information be made available must provide a reasonable justification to the court as to why it must be done. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than saying, "You can't allow anonymous posting."
OCO is Loco
...is 4chan.org
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
I'll even post the information I used to sign up for this Slashdot ID publicly; I have nothing to fear:
Mr. Ivan A Humpabunch
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington D.C., DC 20500
202-456-1414
screwyou@mailinator.com
The rest of you anonymous cowards should be ashamed of yourself.
Cyberbullying? Not likely, it's stifling of speech. Find out who they are then drag them into court to put the fear of the Law into them. Once they're scared into submission, the plantiff can continue on safe in the knowledge that no matter how foul he behaves, no one will comment. I doubt it'll go far.
I'd be really surprised if the the court couldn't all ready do this. There isn't much difference between this and subpoenaing phone records.
Due process is being observed; the defendant is in court and evidence is being gathered. This isn't police warrantlessly fishing through these records. Just because the internet is involved doesn't mean "everything's changed!" That's the battlecry of those who would use it to diminish current due process rights.
Real dumb move there by the decision-makers. What will happen is that Joe Clueless who makes a comment about someone sucking might get stung, while there will be a heightened interest in using a proxy for traffic; likely an offshore proxy that will either reply with unmitigated laughter, or a high resolution picture of a middle finger (or perhaps a sole of a shoe depending on geographic location) when someone demands IP logs.
VPNs are becoming really easy to use these days. The iPhone can activate one with a couple button presses. Browser extensions can activate Tor access with a button press.
If push came to shove and people started being arrested and sued left and right, it wouldn't be difficult for even Joe Sixpack to move to a VPN service, which would make current police work against real criminals a lot harder because every connection, the forensic officer would have to bed the VPN server for IP to IP correlation logs, or be able to monitor all connections to the VPN server and prove that connection "A" went into the network, and was routed to site "B", and do it well enough in a presentation to convince a jury.
If this judge were smart, he would have let the small fry go. This way, the nasty criminals would still be easily catchable without having to make any and all police investigations international affairs.
I'm sure all websites are retaining IP addresses for some time even on anonymous clients, I can't see how they wouldnt. That's what the whole article is actually about in general anyways, divulging the identities of anonymous posters.
"The rulings came in a defamation lawsuit Miller filed last year. He is seeking to broaden the list of defendants in his case to include people who criticized him anonymously last year on websites run by The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis Business Journal and WRTV (Channel 6)."
I guess the lesson, although extreme and childish, is don't say anything untrue about someone even online or you might get sued. haha We knew once the rest of the world was 'let in' to the internet, we'd be fighting ridiculous battles and it would be a lot less fun/free.
So now people venting and not making what they believe are actual statements to the world have to be aware of the situation and get a diary I guess, but not a blog, or you might get sued if you don't have proof that "John Doe is a , maybe. haha
I doubt it.
I suggest that Slashdot have a day of awareness by using "Anonymous Hoosier" for all AC comments.
Fuck the fucking Marion country judges.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, could you explain in more detail please?
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
But I suspect that the judge has made this ruling specifically in reference to civil cases (such as the one Mr Miller has brought). I cannot believe that in a case of illegal activity this would not already be happening - and, no, I don't view defamation (free speech) as an illegal act.
Sweet they can detect an IP, what browser I am running, and an estimate to my location, all in all pretty useless.
We known that IP =/= You, so who cares?
Visit my Forums?
Corporate astroturfing is different than free speech (non-defamatory expression of one's views).
Hopefully most people would have the savvy to react differently to each.
I think he might be proposing a three-way.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
So you can no longer comment anonymously. Start up a secret identity. I've been using one since 1994.
Oh, did you think 'Remus Shepherd' was my real name? It's a pseudonym, and hopefully one that no one can connect to my real name, even if a judge orders them to do so. I'm sure it's not bulletproof, but every layer is another court precedent that has to happen before your anonymity can be taken away.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
This is a letter of love and peace; I will not lash out against anyone, and I will not use specific names of individuals or organizations that implant within the government a set of fifth columnists who are devoted to Newt Gingrich's dream of hammering a few more nails into the coffin of freedom. That said, let me merely point out that he always sounds like he's reading a prepared speech. First and foremost, he is interpersonally exploitative. That is, he takes advantage of others to achieve his own satanic ends. Why does he do that? While that question may not be as profound as "What's the meaning of life?" or "Is there a God?", if Gingrich truly wanted to be helpful, he wouldn't recover the dead past by annihilating the living present.
A few days ago, Gingrich actually admitted that he wants to advocate querulous ultimata. Can you believe that? Perhaps Gingrich forgot to take his antipsychotics that day. An additional clue is that if you read his writings while mentally out of focus, you may get the sense that he has a duty to conceal the facts and lie to the rest of us, under oath if necessary, perjuring himself to help disseminate the True Faith of hooliganism. But if you read Gingrich's writings while mentally in focus and weigh each point carefully, it's clear that he recently stated that his hypnopompic insights are good for the environment, human rights, and baby seals. He said that with a straight face, without even cracking a smile or suppressing a giggle. He said it as if he meant it. That's scary because he's known for sapping people's moral stamina. This is not only a grotesque betrayal of the principles that Gingrich himself claims to uphold but a clear demonstration of how I have a dream, a mission, a set path that I would like to travel down. Specifically, my goal is to set the record straight. Of course, he may be reasonably cunning with words. However, he is absolutely pouty with everything else.
Mark my words: I know some blasphemous, uppity ingrates who actually believe that the purpose of life is self-gratification. Incredible? Those same people have told me that a book of his writings would be a good addition to the Bible. With such people roaming about, it should come as no surprise to you that no man who values himself, who has any regard for sound morality, or who feels any desire to see intellectual progress made certain, can rightfully join Gingrich's jaundiced attempt to convert houses of worship into houses of emotionalism.
Last I checked, Gingrich hates you—yes, you, because you, like me, want to straighten out Gingrich's thinking. He is squarely in favor of communism and its propensity to move increasingly towards the establishment of a totalitarian Earth. This is so typical of Gingrich: he condemns bigotry and injustice except when it benefits him personally. He would have us believe that laws are meant to be broken. That, of course, is nonsense, total nonsense. But Gingrich is surrounded by dodgy slimeballs who parrot the same nonsense, which is why if it were true, as he claims, that a richly evocative description of a problem automatically implies the correct solution to that problem, then I wouldn't be saying that the justification Gingrich gave for priming the pump of Bonapartism was one of the most contemptuous justifications I've ever heard. It was so contemptuous, in fact, that I will not repeat it here. Even without hearing the details you can still see my point quite clearly: Gingrich is currently limited to shrieking and spitting when he's confronted with inconvenient facts. In the blink of an eye, however, Gingrich is likely to switch to some sort of "substitute breast-beating and schwarmerei for action and honest debate" approach to draw our attention away from such facts.
Don't let yourself be buffaloed by Gingrich. Don't let yourself be persuaded to believe that the Queen of England heads up the international drug cartel just because a lot of effrontive troglodytes happen to believe that. Analyze the arguments for yourself and see if you agre
The problem is that the harm done by people positing anonymously is practically nonexistent. People bring up slander, but an anonymous post in an internet forum isn't really slander, it's just at troll. People bring up bomb threats, but there are plenty of ways to make an anonymous bomb threat and tracking this information will not really help with that (honestly, if you're going to make a bomb threat, doing it anonymously in a forum is not a good way to go about it).
On the other hand, requiring websites to hand over identifying information on anonymous posters can be used by law enforcement for all kinds of activities that will stifle free speech. This is my complaint. I'm not saying that the constitution guarantees anonymity (I don't really care what it has to say, since the government doesn't abide in it). I don't even believe in posting anonymously (obviously, that's my email address right there, anyone can tell who I am and how to contact me from any of my posts). What I'm saying is that such a ruling has no purpose except to stifle the free expression of posters on websites.
Companies aren't people. That means they shouldn't be able to contribute to election campaigns and things like that. That wouldn't limit the rights of the owners or employees of a company to make contributions: they could still do that with their own private money.
It would however prevent the company from making contributions based on the decisions of the CEO or majority owner - going contrary to the wishes of e.g. minority owners. That would be a good thing. It would restrict nobody's legitimate political rights, and it would help to reduce corruption.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
Could you please find for me in the Constitution where it says that people lose their rights when they decide to incorporate? I thought the purpose of the government allowing incorporation was to expand the rights of business owners (e.g., limited liability, increased capital investment).
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just be sure you take those collective rights away from the ACLU, the NRA, the NAACP, the NY Times, the AFL-CIO, and Slashdot while you're at it.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Well, maybe it breaks ground in Indiana, but it's always been the case that governments (via secret court order) and lawyers (via subpoena) can force websites to turn over IP addresses for anonymous posters, and then force ISP's to identify the subscribers from the IP address/date and time.
For example, Whole Foods' CEO was caught posting dozens of anonymous messages on Yahoo's finance board trashing a competing chain (Wild Oats Markets).
This just makes me want to setup a proxy connection for no other reason then to post libelous comments about the Judge, just to prove that you can't plug a hole in a dam with a tiny (expletive deleted).
to watch Dershowitz's talk at Google. He pretty much explained why the 1st amendment rights tradition has remained untouched for as long as it has. And why it will suffer from erosion at this point in history.
Slander is illegal regardless of medium, but you have a protected right to express your opinion, even if the subject doesn't like it and feels 'criticized'..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They can't 'identify' something that isn't 'there', right?
Onion Routing? Proxy-blinds? Are they going to go to the trouble?
name
That is why during Revolutionary times nobody wrote anonymously. When the Federalists wrote articles expressing why they thought a constitution was a good idea, they published their papers under there own name. Nobody thought you could write items critical of George III under an assumed name. Sorry for the sarcasm, but, if you don't have anonymous speech, you don't have free speech. However, you have to go to an effort to speak anonymously. Don't put "Tom Payne's Printing" on the bottom of your pamphlets and get all offended when Tom gets served with a subpoena.
Except the $10 USB stick is a "wifi stick" and it has its own MAC address. Much easier to throw away.
If you're logged in, but check the "post anonymously" setting, slashdot apparently retains your association as the author of that comment. You cannot mod your own comment in such a case, even if you logout and login again. I don't know about actual AC postings, although I suspect at the very least the source IP address is retained.
What if newspapers and other sites purged identifying information within a few days of the post?
That would be enough time to subpoena the information immediately in cases of "clear and present danger" or if the police are monitoring a site as part of an active investigation, but not enough to go after comments made more than a few days ago under a one-off handle or as a "guest"/"anonymous coward."
Assuming you don't pre-moderate non-registered comments, you need to keep IP addresses for at least a few hours to make things like spammer-in-progress-from-same-IP-address-blocks work.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...where's the obligatory Wikipedia link to the guy? How am I supposed to know about this "Miller" person if there's no WP article?
Even in civil court, the burden of proof is not on the defendant. So where is the incriminating evidence? hmmm... lets see...
So just how does an attorney think that getting an IP address is going to reveal the name of the poster unless I happen to be single, living alone, no house guests and without any wireless access devices? Who's to say whether or not I choose to lock my wireless router? Does my IP address prove my identity? Does my browser history divulge that I posted a specifc comment? Was I the person using my computer or was it another member of the household, a relative or a house guest? Was the anonymous post tied to a user account?
Where is the proof that "a" particular person at "a" particular location posted the anonymous comment?
At best, you have circumstantial evidence. I don't have to prove my innocence, you, Mr. Attorney have to prove my guilt. When you loose, I sue you.
Just use servers that are located anywhere but Indiana.
I find these charges hard to believe
Then don't believe them
If you are a teacher and someone online calls you a child molester, your boss may be legally liable if he just ignores you and it turns you you are a child molester and you later molest a student. He's pretty much obligated to give the claim lip service and suspend you just long enough to do a cursory CYA examination and declare the allegation "trivial," "unfounded," "without merit," or something similar. If the claim has zero evidence backing it up, he might be able to do it in less than 10 minutes but he can't just ignore it.
On the other hand, if the person making the false claim makes specific allegations, like "countertrolling was my neighbor in Springfield, Illinois in 2002 when I was 13 years old and he molested me and my younger brother. When I told my mom she didn't go to the police but he moved away the next week" and you know from his resume he lived in Springfield until mid-2002, you may have to suspend him for a few days until you can prove to yourself that there is little or no basis to this allegation.
If the allegation cannot be dismissed as unsubstantiated and it becomes your word against his, your Principal may be forced by his HR department or his school's liability-insurance-carrier to reassign you to non-teaching duties until YOU can prove it is a lie. If word leaks to the general public, parents who are more concerned with their kids than the truth may turn it into a political issue and you may find yourself pressured to resign unjustly.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Anyone else feel a sudden, overwhelming chill of Fascism in the air?
but a court already has the possibility to order /. to remove the offending content.
I assume you are referring to the CO$ case of 2001, Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot, which was a DMCA complaint that forced /. to delete a comment that had the "Fishman Affidavit" in it. As the linked post above says, this affidavit is widely available online.
Back then /. didn't have the $$$ to go up against the Church of Scientology.
Now that they've gone corporate, $$$ won't be an issue.
There may be other reasons they might cave to a takedown notice, but $$$ won't be one of them.
I would expect /. and its corporate parent to honor legitimate DMCA-takedown requests and of course counter-notices, and I would expect them not to even try to fight a clear-cut case of a copyright violation.
The problem with the CO$ is that the claims of copyright protection are not as clear-cut as the CO$ would like everyone to think, but the CO$ has very intimidating lawyers and the $$$ to back them.
If this were to happen today, I would expect /. to "honor" the DMCA takedown request but encourage and facilitate the original commenter to file a counter-notice, thereby allowing /. to re-upload it without liability. I say "without liability" because if /. encouraged anyone to file a fraudulent counter-notice, it likely would increase rather than eliminate /.'s liability.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
ref: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/28/newspaper_anonymous_commenters/
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You are a principal at a school.
You are filtering through resumes that HR gave you. HR was careful not to use any "unofficial" sources so they never saw that one of the candidates had some guy ranting that she was a child molester.
HR never told you not to do your own research, so you do your own Google search on each.
You eliminate all but 6 of them for legitimate reasons, i.e. bad fit for the job, etc.
You see the 6 look reasonably equally qualified but one one of them has someone ranting that she's a child molester.
You realize you can't use this as a reason to exclude her so you tell HR that in the interest of time, you will only be inviting 4 people to interview. The "pedophile" and some other unlucky candidate are not invited to interview.
Lather, rinse, and repeat and this poor teacher may never realize why she's not getting interviews.
OR, she gets interviews but the interviewing principals use subjective reasons to hire other equally-qualified teachers over her.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
there is probably something seriously wrong with the way you're living your life
* You've had the bad misfortune to meet someone who has severe problems and takes them out on innocent people.
* You done very stupid things in your past that make you look bad to people who don't know the whole story and which would take more time to explain than most people have. The DWI deferred-adjudication arrest that has since been completed and is not part of your formal record may show up on the blog post of someone who is bent on making sure you never live it down. If you are applying for a job as a day-care-center worker whose responsibilities include driving, this could get you removed from consideration and you may never know why.
* You have a not-so-common name that is identical to someone who has a shady past or present.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
An otherwise-credible-sounding anonymous charge of a serious crime or serious moral breach can't always be summarily dismissed without subjecting the person getting the information to legal liability if it turns out to be true.
This is particularly true if the allegation shows behavior that, at first glance, indicates you are likely to hurt someone in the future. "[Name] is involved in dog-fighting and he makes his children watch" can't be summarily dismissed by your boss if you work puts you in charge of children or animals - your boss must at least do a cursory cover-his-ass investigation. If it's "obviously a crank" then this investigation may take 5 minutes. If it's "not obviously a crank" but not "credible on its face" it may take longer. If it's detailed enough to be "credible on its face" (say, there are photos that look un-doctored) then not only would your boss be obligated to suspend you pending an investigation, he may be required to notify authorities, depending on the animal- and child-abuse-reporting statutes in your state.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
do we search for people leaving threatening anonymous letters in somebody's mailbox
Leaving a letter in someone's mailbox is a violation of postal rules and is a federal crime.
Now, if the same letter was taped to his door or to his fence and the post office and postal regs were not at issue, then it becomes a very good question.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...does not mean unaccountable speech.
"You want to know who is responsible? JEFF MILLER. He is the most greedy man I've ever known," a commenter identified as Indeed posted on the IBJ's site.
"If you accuse somebody of committing a crime of thievery, that is defamation, and we believe that is what they are saying," said Miller's attorney, Kevin Betz. "The Internet is not a license to defame people and treat them in a mean-spirited way that harms them psychologically and economically."[BR]
If the CEO is maintaining he is not responsible for the funds not being used right; then, I think he needs to be sued for being very stupid. The person at the top is always responsible for the acts of undertaken by people employed by the company. The rest (" most greedy") is an opinion and can NOT be grounds for lawsuits in nearly all cases.
Tim S.
Don't post stuff in the USA.
Pretty soon the US is going to see all parts of the internet hosted on non-US soil, to avoid all the US BS. Companies will follow suit. As will Jobs.
Then the US will just be a tiny speed bump on the information superhighway. I mean the great thing about the internet is that it is distributed, it doesn't actually have to exist in a certain place and thus be subject to its stupid laws. Just move the physical bits somewhere nicer.
I've got 6 candidates, but I know from experience if I interview 3 I'm likely to get a good candidate. I'm only interviewing 6 because I'm too nice to randomly pick 3 even though it would save me several hours' time.
Now all the sudden I've got someone who I know I won't hire unless I get a darned good explanation. But I'm up to my eyeballs in paperwork and all the sudden I don't care so much about being fair, so I "arbitrarily" cut the invitee list from 6 to 4. Nobody but me knows I'm not being arbitrary, and my staff will probably even appreciate the fact that I'm spending only 4 hours interviewing instead of 6.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If you are reading this, then nope, still works.
Most of these people just set up servers without checking the default configuration. Step one to your plan: Configure all software to not store data by default.
"No, you can still donate with your own money, what right do you lose?"
My right to use the profits of my corporation to exercize my right to petition my government? My right to freely associate with others and not lose my right to freedom of expression. Unions and the NAACP and other organizations have said rights, but simply because I incorporate, an organization you don't like, it's somehow different? Where does it say in the First Amendment that Asic Eng gets to decide who has rights?
"Freedom of association (which is a political right, though not part of the US constitution btw)"
Although it is not explicitly protected in the First Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled, in NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958), freedom of association to be a fundamental right protected by it. So yeah, it's a constitutional right. In that case, revealing the names of members of the NAACP would have led to their persecution.
"There is nothing wrong with you associating in a political organization to elect John Doe III for senate. There is a lot wrong with you becoming the CEO of a health insurance company and using your company's profits to funnel money to his election campaign"
Ah, I see, so *you* get to decide who gets to say what, and what kind of political activity is permissible in a free society. A group I disagree with can form a PAC solely designed to tax or regulate or even banish my company, but my organization doesn't have the right to advocate against it, because you don't like my industry. Sorry, under the First Amendment, we don't allow subject-based or content-based censorship. It's the speech you *don't* agree with that must be protected in a free society.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
It has always been possible to get a court-ordered subpoena to force the website to show its logs, giving the IP addresses of so-called "anonymous" posters.
But every time some new story comes out about this, everyone runs about like chickens screaming the sky is falling. /facepalm
Protip: Don't commit crimes on the internet. Because... if you do... you are NOT Anonymous. Unless, of course, you're behind 7 proxies.
(Of course in practice it's much more complicated than this, because whoever's running the proxy server may also have logs which can be subpoenaed. And then there's the question of whether the proxy/site even keeps logs, how long they keep them, and whether they're going to be happy to hand them over, which they might not if they're located outside the US.)
Notice how Anonymous Coward and Anonymous are nouns/knowns, and neither are actually anonymous.
I guess anonymity is a known attorney delivery a strawman message on his behalf that someone is about to be sued for some reason; like how buying Fire Insurance is an implicit way of saying that you will be burning your house down soon and demand money when the job is done.
I think that GOTO wouldn't be so harmful if everyone adopted the non-aggression principle.
To be practical as a social organizing principle, it must do its work when not everyone signs on.
That's why the non-aggression principle only bans INITIATING coercion. "Never start a fight. Always finish one." is a "compatible license".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Therefore your name is now Anonymous and no longer anonymous.
I told you all, if you keep trying to treat bloggers as if they are real journalists, the special privileges that journalists get are going to go away. Did anyone listen? Nope. Now look what you've done!
I'm hiding behind 7 crown victorias at Starbucks.
Courtesy Wiki:
"The incorporation of the Bill of Rights (or incorporation for short) is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to the 1890s, the Bill of Rights was held only to apply to the federal government. Under the incorporation doctrine, most provisions of the Bill of Rights now also apply to the state and local governments, by virtue of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
Prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and the development of the incorporation doctrine, in 1833 the Supreme Court held in Barron v. Baltimore that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal, but not any state governments. Even years after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment the Supreme Court in United States v. Cruikshank, still held that the First and Second Amendment did not apply to state governments. However, beginning in the 1890s, a series of United States Supreme Court decisions interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to "incorporate" most portions of the Bill of Rights, making these portions, for the first time, enforceable against the state governments."
Note: whether a state is subject to the 3rd Amendment (quartering of soldiers) depends on the state; states are not subject to that part of the 5th Amendment regarding the right to indictment by a grand jury (the rest of the 5th Amendment is applicable to states); states are not subject to the 7th Amendment (right to trial by jury in civil matters); states are not subject to that part of the 8th Amendment concerning protection against excessive fines or bail (but are subject to the rest of the Amendment);
The UK, apparently, has just declared AC posting to be a right.