Anonymity not a "Free Speech" right

EngrBohn writes " A Federal judge has ruled that anonymous "defamation" on the Internet is not covered under Free Speech". This relates to the case of an anonymous user on Yahoo!, who was making claims about Xircom in chat boards, referring to their products as "faulty" and poorly designed. Recently, Raytheon went through a similar situation. (Link is NY Times: Free Login required).

Comments

Non-anonymous defamation not protected either.

[root]

The key word is defamation. Weather it comes from an anonymous source or a non-anoymous source should be irrelevant. Defamation never was a protected form of speech just like you can be arrested for yelling "fire" in a theater when there's no fire.This ruling about defamation- not anonymity.

Isn't anonymity protected?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Two cases come to mind: "McINTYRE v.OHIO ELECTIONS COMMISSION 514 US 334 (1995) and Talley v. California 362 U.S. 60 (1960) .

In the McIntyre case, the court protected the right of a woman to distribute anonymous handbills expressing her opposition to a referendum. In the Talley case, the courts protected the rights of a protestor to distribute anonymous leaflets alleging employment discrimination. Both distribution attempts violated local ordinances banning anonymous communication.

In Talley the court stated that "Accordingly, an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."

The court has recognized in McIntyre a general right to anonymous speech, finding that "[t]he decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry. Accordingly, an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. "

In both of these decisions, the court noted that the highest protections should be given to political speech.

As I recall, Cmdr Taco has assurred us that slashdot doesn't store records of Anonymous Cowards. Whether he would be required to turn over the identities corresponding to named accounts is an open question.

To the dismay of some, the best prophylactic against subpoenas may be to increase the level of political discussion on slashdot. Since accounts could be used to post protected anonymous opinions, it might well infringe on protected free speech rights to reveal the actual owner...

I'm two ways about this...here's why.

[MrKai]

I always post as me, use a real email address etc for a very important reason that I think a lot of us have overlooked.

The net gives the above-average/saavy user great power, greater than say the phone to which the average person uses to connect to it, but in most cases, not as great as say, broadcast tv.

What it does not do is add a level of *personal responsibily* on parity with that power.

I'm going through this right now. I'm being defamed on a 'public forum' on a privately-owned website by someone using an assumed name because this person *thinks* I am someone else.

Now for the most part, we learn to ignore it. In this case the poster is making quite nasty, and patently untrue statements, some even with racial overtones (which I generally ignore as well) to an audience that I write for, and cannot verify the basis of his false claims do to software/platform related issues.

What's more, is that since this individual feels that he is 'protected' by his ISP's 'hands-off'-ish policy, he can continue, despite repeated warnings, with impunity.

Now I ask you: is this what we had in mind, people?

Sure, not quite on the same scale as spreading false financial info...or is it?

As we move ever-forward, many (many) of us make our living totally within the confines of BitSpace.

And word, true or otherwise, travels real fast out here.

Sure, we want to be protected from the spammers, etc.

But for the level of power the net gives the indiviual, we may need another level of checks and balances as well for public posting.

At least here on /. you can demote the AC's. Maybe we need a Net-Wide 'license to post' as well.

-K

The future

[Mr T]

Free speech protects you from the government, it has nothing to do with saying nasty thing about some company or group of people and having them hate you. It doesn't explicitly make any provisions for anonymity. There is a difference between being able to speak out and not being able to speak out and then there can be consequences for speaking out. It's only a matter of time, we will end up with anonymous registries, you can speak anonymously but if you slander or say anything to hurt somebody they will reveal you because it's not supposed to be a cloak for that purpose. Information is too powerful and it is too easy to do damage with it, and we as a society are way too immature to deal with it. Free speech requires responsibility, anonymous free speech requires even more.

If you're a whistleblower then you go to the authorities or media who, in turn, should responsibly deal with the situation and your identity, you don't air your problems in a public forum anonymously. It won't fix the problems and it only stands to hurt the organization that has the problems, at that point your free speech is an act of aggression and not an act of whistleblowing. The only case where there may be no authorities is if it is the government you are blowing the whistle one but you're given explicit protection to speak against them. The Xircom case involves a pseudowhistle blower who lacked any responsibility, you should get in trouble for that.

I think anonymous registries will be a good thing for this reason: what happens when the companies and the government catches on to the information revolution? I'm thinking about what happened a few years ago with all those anti-scientologists on the net. The church of scientology is a big and powerful organization and it legally shut a lot of people down by controlling information. Think of a microsoft of IBM or tobacco company controlling the information. If you want to have your privacy and the ability to slander and defame people and companies there will be serious motivation for those companies and the government to start mastering information and the value of tracking down "anonymous" people will be much higher. The other side of that coin is to have registered anonymity and as soon as you start crossing the line of legality someone can get a subpoena and learn your identity. Of course this is going to cause some serious issues with the civil libs and the privacy nuts who absolutley refuse to be numbered but it's going to happen if people continue to abuse anonymous speech.