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I've been thinking about anonymity lately, in the context of RIAA subpoenas and lawsuits, ICANN's WHOIS task forces, and most recently, proposed HR 3754. I've heard from many people, lawyers and technologists alike, who don't seem to recognize that our rights to anonymous speech have deep roots. Many see anonymity as a bug of Internet architecture, to be eliminated in the next revision; or at best a feature of limited value readily traded off against other costs and benefits.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held otherwise, finding that a constitutional right to anonymous speech is derived from the First Amendment. Requiring a speaker to identify him or herself, after all, "abridg[es] the freedom of speech". Thus the State of Ohio couldn't require campaign literature to be signed with name and address of its distributor (McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission); the Village of Stratton couldn't force canvassers going door-to-door to register first, despite strong local government interests in preventing fraud (Watchtower Bible & Tract Society v. Village of Stratton). Even significant government interests in protecting their citizens can't be met with restrictions on anonymous speech.
Declan McCullagh's latest column points out some of the historical uses of anonymity, from the days when "Publius" authored the Federalist Papers. More currently, whistleblowers use anonymity to expose company wrongdoing; human rights activists use anonymity to report human rights abuses; uncertain teenagers and adults use anonymity or pseudonymity to discuss their sexuality; and citizens of all political stripes still use anonymity to debate politics and governance without being judged on their personal atributes.
Granted, not everyone is using anonymity for such laudable purposes, but some people are, and that's enough. Plenty of laws that don't burden anonymity already address the misuses. The others are entitled to use anonymity up until the point that they are found to have misused it, not to have this fundamental right stripped on mere accusations.
Dan Gillmor warns that Verisign is looking to relaunch its loathed SiteFinder: "VeriSign will ultimately do whatever it can get away with."
VeriSign characterizes SiteFinder opponents as anti-innovation ("an ideological belief by a narrow section of the technological community who don't believe you should innovate the core infrastructure of the Internet") but that couldn't be further from the truth. Most technologists strongly support innovation, they just don't believe that VeriSign should be able to parlay its monopoly on the .com and .net naming hierarchies into a monopoly on innovation. As Paul Vixie puts it:
"What they're saying is, 'We want to shift cost to the community to increase our profit,'" Vixie said. "This is a form of theft by most legal definitions, if you're going to shift costs unilaterally toward another group of people to increase your own profits. It's certainly unethical and immoral and it would be illegal if you were to do it with physical goods."I've said it before and will say it again, keeping the center simple best promotes innovation overall.