A free society not only permits certain kinds of anonymity but actually depends on them
In cyberspace no one knows you’re a dog, but no one knows you’re from the FBI either. Thus our government, the US government and many others are caught in two minds. On the one hand, they are supposed to be in favour of free speech, but on the other hand, well, you know Danish cartoonists, criminals, child pornographers, terrorists, enemies of the state, dissidents, apostates etc. So should we allow anonymity or not?
Our sense of internet anonymity is largely an illusion. Everything we do online is recorded somewhere: every web site we visit, every e-mail we send, every file we download. I’m surprised that politicians, in particular, who keep going on about how terrible internet anonymity is, don’t understand a little more about the dynamics of the problem. If they did, they would realise that anonymity isn’t what it seems!
In general, you are not anonymous on the internet, but economically anonymous (what I will call “enonymous”), and that’s not the same thing at all. If you threaten to kill the president, the state you will spend whatever is necessary to track you down. But if you call Lily Allen a hereditary celebrity and copyright hypocrite (not my own views, naturally) the government will not spend money on finding you. Of course, if Lily wants to spend her own money on hunting you down and taking a civil action for libel, then fair enough, that’s the English way of limiting free speech.
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