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Society needs weapons against cyberbullying, which can be a seriously harmful activity, and against libel that is shielded by anonymity. But somehow, surprise surprise, neoliberal governments are using those worthy goals, in Great Britain now (but in New York last month), to advance a sledgehammer attack on internet anonymity.
Photo: Frederik Hermann / Flickr.
I’m talking about this: New Law to Force Identification of Trolls Set to be Unveiled. Well, no, that headline is wrong: the new law would force identification of alleged trolls, without allowing the accused a chance to challenge that characterization in a court of law.
The new law is being pushed forward in the understandably emotional aftermath of the Nicola Brookes case, where cyberbullies set up a fake and slanderous Facebook page about her. Facebook was required to reveal the names and other identifying information about the bullies, which I for one 100% support.
But you’re wrong if you think all that the new law will go after are internet bullies who have really hurt people. Flexibility is already here, and offensive speech is what often matters, not evidence of injury:
In March, a British student was jailed for 56 days for tweeting racist abuse of a popular black soccer player, Fabrice Muamba, [after he] suffered an almost fatal heart attack during a match.
Joan Smith, a columnist writing in The Independent newspaper in Britain, condemned the abuse as stupid and unfeeling, but also accused the court that sentenced the student of bowing to public opinion.
“A custodial sentence is wildly excessive and has worrying implications for freedom of expression, which is too important a subject to be brushed aside on grounds of ‘public outrage,’ ” she wrote.
The bottom-line problem with the proposed law is that it would bypass the court system. Instead, those who allege they have been cyber-bullied or cyber-libeled simply go to the host site company, make the allegations, and if the company doesn’t respond by revealing the identities of the accused, the alleged victim can take the company to court. Left in corporate hands is the decision whether to carefully filter illegitimate complaints out of the process or to simply reveal anonymous identities to virtually every complainant. No, internet companies will not spend a significant chunk of monies that would otherwise be profits protecting your free speech.
Bigger-picture-wise, by removing from the court system and handing to private-profit corporations the decision on whether a cyberbullying or libel complaint is legitimate or illegitimate, we see how neoliberals typically respond to a social problem and how much value they put on free speech: privatize; hardly any.
Me, I like free speech, and if Mark Twain and Shakespeare thought anonymity was a useful tool, a useful protection, maybe it’s something worth preserving.
9 Comments
There are very powerful commercial interests, of course, behind the destruction of anonymity. Surprised, then, that the following article, otherwise v interesting, doesn’t articulate the obvious commercial reasons WHY Google and Facebook want you non-anonymous:
Interesting -
Also interesting is the UN attempt to take control of the internet from the non-profits and the US – pushed by China and Russia who say the 2 cyberwarfare worms prove the US is not trustworthy enough to continue to control things – perhaps China will allow new domain names once the get themselves and their allies on the UN group that will control the internet. Indeed the new UN rules on the rights of states to censor everything should be interesting.
I doubt the above will go anywhere – but the fact that it is proposed is scary.
Money, money, money makes the world go around!
Any other rationale is simply an excuse for cupidity.
Rule # 1: Follow the money.
Rule # 2-infinity: Refer to rule # 1.
End of story.
The elite psycopaths have to walk a fine line. They can’t have complete internet transparency because they don’t want to reveal all the, government and corporate, shills and psyop psychos. They will never do that. They are crucial to their maintaining control of debates. So, they will have to do it like this law, where anonymity gets removed only when they want it removed. Typical double standard.
But let’s not forget that Jane Hamsher has no qualms about using the privacy destroying Google analytics. Check those cookies boys and girls. _utmb, etc. Yepp, those are from Google. So whenever you check in at FDL, and do anything, Google get a complete record. Another fail for FDL. Maybe somebody wants to explain why using Google tracking is progressive?? Come on, don’t be shy.
Get anonymous! Then u won’t care who tracks your anonymous identity. And if necessary put a fake proxy server between you and the nets.
If Jane ever requires RL identities like Facebook and Google do, this place is over.
Jane already knows who we are IRL, we’re members. She’s got our cc info, and has called us at home. It’s the trolls who would scatter like the fleas they are.
There’s a silver lining to this, at least for me.
If they take away internet anonymity, I can track down and sue all the Obots who called me a racist. This has been a personal goal of mine ever since the 2008 primaries.
http://youtu.be/_02j3qZEEHM
Rec’d fairleft, for the heads-up. I confess I’ll need to read all the links again to see if I can divine the contentions that ‘the public wants to know who participants are in real life’. Added to which: it amazes me that anyone, and especially Occupys, would use Facebook, given its reputation for insecurity.
4 chan and Tor; oh wait: I write under my own name. Or…do I? ;oP
Racism wars! I am not a racist wars! You probably could sue in Britain, but I don’t see what your grounds would be here in the States.