The end of "anonymous" postings on message boards?

[Porsche]

From here:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21918902-1702,00.html

Court case to test 'anonymous' Internet

By Jason Szep in Boston

June 16, 2007 10:29pm
Article from: Reuters

It bills itself as the world's "most prestigious college discussion board", giving a glimpse into law school admissions policies, post-graduate social networking and the hiring practices of major law firms.

But the AudoAdmit site, widely used by law students for information on schools and firms, is also known as a venue for racist and sexist remarks and career-damaging rumors.

Now it's at the heart of a defamation lawsuit that legal experts say could test the anonymity of the Internet.

Very interesting article. What do the other posters think of this issue?

[Jim Bremner]

leave it to the lawyers to ruin it.




how many lawyer jokes are there?















3, the rest are true.

[the]

The "end" of anonymous posting?

There never really was any anonymous posting.

If you defame someone, you can't hide behind the supposed anonymity of the internet. You'd get sued (as a "Doe") defendant, your ISP (like Yahoo, etc.) would get subpoenaed, and they'd turn over all of their info on you.

They won't turn over anything without a subpoena. But with one, they don't care at all. Because they have no liability by turning over information pursuant to a court order.

So there certainly is not "right" to remain anonymous, I don't think there ever was.

Of course, anyone hell bent on posting illegal stuff (libel, threats, etc) anonymously, who knows anything about computers, or has access to a computer used by many people, etc., could do so in a way that would be impossible to trace back to them.