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."

Comments

I am ironically....

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting this anonymously

Re:I am ironically....

[Anonymous Coward]

I demand that /. reveal the identity of the parent poster!

Re:I am ironically....

[h00manist]

And if they don't have the identifying data, are the journalists then sued for aiding and abetting unaccountable subservive activities?

For what reason?

[mosb1000]

The only reason a court would be gathering such information is to stifle free speech.

Re:For what reason?

[Ogive17]

If I were to go around the internet telling everyone that you are a child molester, wouldn't you want to find out my identity? Oh, I posted as an AP when I did it, tough luck. Now if a future employer google's your name it's all over the internet and you have to waste your time explaining it and I got off without even a slap on the wrist.
I think both sides have good arguments, I would hate for there to be a 'one size fits all' solution to this dilema. If someone is slandering my name on the internet anonymously, I want to go after that person. First I should have to prove the allegations are false, though.

Re:For what reason?

[Beetle B.]

Oh, let's dispense with the silly sensationalism.

Free speech was never meant to defend acts of libel.

If reasonable acts of libel took place, and the site knows the IP address of the posters, then it is ridiculous to use the shield law. That's like saying that I can set up a newspaper where I don't disclose the identity of any of my journalists, and where they can freely malign any individual through it while appealing to the shield law. That is ridiculous.

What wasn't clear from a cursory reading is whether the news outlets will be required to store the information. That's a bit overstepping, if it's the case. It's like saying that if I have a bulletin board in my supermarket, then I should be required to get the identity of anyone who posts there.

While not germane to the point of the story, I've not seen one instance of a news site allowing comments improving the quality of the site, or the discourse.

Not once.

Open comments to news stories almost always have brought out the worst in people in every news site I've seen. There's almost never anything informative in them, and even if there is a comment that makes a valid point, it is lost in the crowd of other comments.

Re:For what reason?

[Miseph]

You may think that qualifier is "bullshit" but it's a well-established and widely accepted one. We have drawn the line where free speech ends at the commission of a crime or threat of harm for a very long time, and doing so is considered appropriate even by the vast majority of card-carrying members of the ACLU.

You're welcome to disagree, but pretending that this is an irrational or unprecedented distinction is just silly.

Re:For what reason?

[MozeeToby]

It's simple really. If a serious threat of violence is made in an online forum, the police in the jurisdiction the threat is directed at go to a judge, fill out the paper work, and get a warrant. If someone is libeling you, you take the evidence, go to the judge, get a court order. It isn't as if this case is saying that anyone can make a request to get IP addresses of anonymous posters, it would still require a court order or warrant to get that information.

Re:For what reason?

[countertrolling]

There's also the grand proposition of reprogramming society not to respond positively to hearsay. That's your "one size fits all". It's all about conditioned response and behavior modification, with specific keywords to set off the alarm, no matter the context. Real, honest to god psy-ops at work. Piece of cake. There's a small stink about the military trying it out on some congressmen in Afghanistan. I have to laugh when I consider how well it's working on genpop when they all recite almost word for word what they hear on the TV.

I find these charges hard to believe

Then don't believe them

Re:For what reason?

[MightyYar]

Bullfighting is well established and widely accepted also. Does that make it okay?

In Spain, yes. In India, no.

It's suppression.

Suppression can be good. Bad suppression: mowing down peaceful protesters in a public square. Good suppression: putting a serial killer in prison.

An assertion of arbitrary authority.

Depends how far you stretch the term "arbitrary". Our government is, in theory, "of the people". We elect them, and our elected officials appoint the judiciary - except where the judiciary is directly elected. It may not be the best system, but I'd hardly call it "arbitrary".

The commission of a crime has nothing to do with speech.

A death threat is a crime, and it has everything to do with speech. To paraphrase Holmes, falsely yelling "fire" in a theater is a crime, and it has everything to do with speech.

Re:For what reason?

[Rary]

Of course, such people would not stoop to simply post such messages using someone else's computer / account / wifi, etc..

So what? The point of obtaining that kind of information isn't simply to blindly arrest whoever was identified. The point is to question the person as part of an ongoing investigation. If there is reason to believe that the person in question has committed an offence, then they may be arrested. But a name associated with an IP address or a forum account is not, in itself, sufficient evidence to get a conviction.

Perhaps the key is

[The MAZZTer]

To ensure this information is never stored in the first place.

Recap

[Compaqt]

1. People under tyranny
2. Write pamphlets anonymously
3. Make a new country
4. GOTO 1
5. "Goto considered harmful"

Re:Recap

[dkleinsc]

Your post was too long, so I hope you don't mind that I stopped reading it after 16 steps or so.