Jun 18 2009
Blogging Anonymously Coming Under Fire
Pseudononymous writing has been part of our culture for as long as the written word existed. Text by “anonymous” existed even in Ancient Greece. A detective in Britain lost a suit wherein he tried to stop a newspaper from revealing his true identity. The blogger wrote about the local police department and won a prestigious reporting prize for political writing. Since his outing, the blogger deleted his blog and was subject to a written reprimand from his superiors.
My understanding is that British and US laws are very different on this subject but I doubt that even a US blogger could get an injunction to prevent a newspaper from revealing a blogger’s identity. There have been cases which prevent ISPs from giving up identifying information, however; and there is a long history of US caselaw supporting anonymous speech.
(Thanks to Anion the Evil for bringing this to my attention).
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Jun 18, 2009 @ 09:56:29
Currently, a newspaper in Las Vegas is dealing with a subpoena requesting info on anonymous posters who made threats. http://tinyurl.com/l5hjft There are some interesting legal questions in both situations.