I clicked, because I wanted to see what Joe Biden had to say under the snazzy headline "Obama: On the way to a failed presidency?" The link goes to a Washington Post column with that headline — but it's by Katrina vanden Heuvel ("editor and publisher of the Nation" who "writes a weekly online column for The Post").
Can anyone explain why the automatic aggregator Memeorandum would have picked up that column and attached Biden's name to it? I'm guessing the answer is pretty boring: "Joe Biden" appears in a line above the column, near the top of the page, that begins "Hot Topics." That does give rise to a new puzzle: What's hot about Biden? Clicking on his name, I see that he "heads to the Hill to talk taxes" today. Sizzling!
There's an American tradition of speaking pseudonymously, most prominently exemplified by The Federalist Papers. Why not listen to what is being said and apply your judgment? Have we lost the ability to judge without seeing who's saying it? If our critical thinking is that poor, what's the point of letting us vote?
They're fighting back. The empire is striking back. To win this election, they are plowing tens of millions of dollars into front groups. They are running misleading negative ads all across the country.
Why not just argue on the substantive merits of the issues? He's inviting us to think in stark good versus evil style — straight out of fantasy movies. You need to know who is saying something, not what is being said, because you should side with the good guys — his government — not think in any detail about the issues.
I hope you notice that Obama is not talking about the identity of campaign donors. He's talking about independent speakers who don't want to reveal the names of all their donors.
[O]n the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is... moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity... in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It's all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon.
Terrible. My heart goes out to you, Molly, even though I was always opposed to the "everybody draw Mohammed" approach to protesting the threats against the cartoonists who had drawn Muhammad. I believe strongly in free speech rights, but I think people should, in deciding how to exercise their rights, think about the effect their speech has on others who don't deserve to be offended. I imagine (and hope) that Molly is drawing her adventures and telling her story in what will be a widely read comic book. She has a charming drawing style and a nice sense of humor — plus the panache of unjust persecution and danger. Good luck!
ADDED: There's a big Metafilter thread about it, which I'm reading after writing that. A surprising number of people are blaming Norris for bringing the death threats on herself.
Newsbusters is getting a lot of attention for an article with that flashy headline, but the headline is completely unjustified by the video it purports to analyze. Let me walk you through the text and show you what I mean:
Anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed the "mixed blessing of the internet," and agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others on the internet.
Phillips and Roberts agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others. Take note. You'll see that they don't. And what does that have to do with the "Sherrod Incident" referenced in the headline? Andrew Breitbart is the polar opposite of anonymous. He seems to love getting his name out there and all over everything. And the disparaging of Shirley Sherrod was done through her own image and words in a video clip.
Newsbusters quotes Roberts telling us what we know: the short clip of Sherrod's speech made her seem a lot worse than the whole clip. But, as Roberts notes, we did go further and get the whole context.
Phillips brings in the the problem of anonymous bloggers:
"There's going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable," Phillips said. "How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they're actually given credibility, which is crazy. They're a bunch of cowards, they're just people seeking attention."
Roberts cites a conversation with Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture":
"Well what Andrew talked about with me was this idea of a gatekeeper but there are huge first amendment rights that come into play here - freedom of speech and all that. And he said the people who need to be the gatekeepers are the media to check into these stories," said Roberts.
So, Roberts isn't saying there should be a government crackdown. He recognizes the First Amendment, and says Keen said he wanted the media to be the gatekeepers. Newsbusters says:
Phillips wanted to go even further, asking if "there's going to come a point where something's going to have to be done legally" about anonymous bloggers.
So... legally... does that imply a government crackdown or is Phillips only suggesting that there can be defamation lawsuits brought by individuals in which the identity of "anonymous" — really, the word should be pseudonymous — bloggers can be discovered?
"There has to be some point where there's some accountability. And companies, especially in the media have to stop giving these anonymous bloggers credit," she said.
So, Phillips ends up back at the idea that the media need to shift and winnow the material that comes up through the internet. Where's the crackdown?
"If you're in a place like Iran or North Korea or something like that, anonymous blogging is the only way you could ever get your point of view out without being searched down and thrown in jail or worse," said Roberts. "But when it comes to a society like ours, an open society, do there have to be some checks and balances, not national, but maybe website to website on who comments on things?"
Not national... I think that means he's saying the federal government should not be doing the checking and balancing. Roberts is saying that "website to website" something should be done — maybe just a rejection of anonymous comments. It's annoying that Roberts doesn't distinguish between pseudonymous bloggers and anonymous (or pseudonymous) commenters, but I don't see any place where he agrees even with Phillips's use of the word "legally," which was completely vague and most likely referred only to defamation lawsuits.
CNN's two regulation-happy reporters...
They never mentioned regulation! I think they were talking about the marketplace of ideas in which we are all the gatekeepers. In that marketplace of ideas, I'm cracking down on Newsbusters! This much-linked article is reeking crapola. And yet it is raking in traffic.
CNN's two regulation-happy reporters think the Sherrod situation can help bring attention to the "necessity" of blogging reform if she brings a defamation lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart.
What is the sentence with that word "necessity" in it? I went to the video, and I couldn't find it. I listened to the end of the segment 3 times, and it seems to me that the 2 reporters peter out with Roberts talking about how we all have to "be aware" and how he always tells young people not to put naked pictures of themselves on the internet.
"Regulation-happy"? "Blogging reform"? "Crackdown"? What nonsense!
IN THE COMMENTS: Old Dad said...
CNN's real problem is cablecasting boring and pedestrian filler.
Exactly. Newsbusters, ironically, is making them seem exciting. I think Roberts knew they were being pointless and tedious. That's why went all naked teenagers!!!!! in the end.
It uses the word "anonymous" for "pseudonymous" throughout this discussion of on-line comments, fudging the case for requiring those who comment on news stories to use their real names.
That aside, I'm interested in the question whether a newspaper can investigate and reveal the identity of those who comment without using their real names.
The Plain Dealer of Cleveland recently discovered that anonymous comments on its site, disparaging a local lawyer, were made using the e-mail address of a judge who was presiding over some of that lawyer’s cases.
That kind of proxy has been documented before; what was more unusual was that The Plain Dealer exposed the connection in an article. The judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold, denied sending the messages — her daughter took responsibility for some of them. And last week, the judge sued The Plain Dealer, claiming it had violated her privacy.
Hmmm. I'd like to see this legal question connected to lawsuits that are aimed at discovering who's behind an on-line pseudonym. I tend to disfavor both kinds of lawsuits, but I'll bet there are people who would in sequence, without thinking too much, favorboth. You can't favor both, can you?
... who I assume was pro-Obama and writing under a pseudonym here with the object of making this blog — and more generally, criticism of Obama — look racist. This coward put up his comment on my 9:50 p.m. post — "Should the President be insulting pop stars?" — at 11:52, presumably to maximize the time that it would be up on the blog and that it would sit here as long as possible before I would take it down, which I did as soon as I got on the blog this morning at around 9 (Central Time).
The commenter, Metlife, had never posted here before and had a profile showing that he'd joined Blogger just this month. He wrote — and the asterisks are mine: "can someone murder that f***ing n***** fast? It will be a good day when Hussein is murdered by one of our southern patriots."
The pushback was immediate. Joe wrote at 11:59: "Could the previous comment be stricken and the poster banned?" Just Lurking said: "Is that you moby?" (suggesting, as I am doing now, that Metlife was against not Obama but this blog community). John Stodder said: "Althouse is probably asleep, but if you have her phone number, wake her up and tell her to delete it." (No one did that.)
Seven Machos said: "Okay, first, get Metlife out of here. At least Cedarford is subtle and occasionally witty.... All racist ass clowns and pretend-racist-agent-provocateur ass clowns should take note of Cedarford's work. This is how it's done." (Cedarford is a longtime commenter who writes well but often expresses extreme ideas of the sort that I do not censor).
Peter Hoh said:
I'm guessing that nolife is a plant. A true Southerner always capitalizes the S.
And wouldn't a full-blown racist southerner consider that "southern" is an unnecessary modifier for "patriot"?
Plus he knew how to spell "Hussein."
Good ole boys spell it "Hoo-sane."
Former law student said...
Speak of laying a turd and someone does. Probably an agent provocateur, because he created a fresh identity for the occasion.
An insidious and specialized type of left-wing troll who visits blogs and impersonates a conservative for the purpose of either spreading false rumors intended to sow dissension among conservative voters, or who purposely posts inflammatory and offensive comments for the purpose of discrediting the blog in question.
The term is derived from the name of the liberal musician Moby, who famously suggested in February of 2004 that left-wing activists engage in this type of subterfuge: “For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you’re an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, ‘What’s all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?’”
The strategy has been frequently attempted on conservative blogs, but has not been nearly as effective as Moby envisioned, since false rumors are easily debunked by fact-checking minions, and cartoonishly extreme commenters often get immediately identified as mobys and banned.
Lucid said:
Actually, Metlife, with his registration [email] and ip address, should be reported to the secret service. Threatening the president is a serious crime, as it should be.
I also wonder if Metlife is actually a lefty troll pulling an Alinsky.
God, what a festering stinkhole of a web site this is. I don't know how you wingnut loons can stand stewing in your own shit like this, presided over by the shit mistress, Ann Althouse.
Of course she's too dishonest to tell you dumb motherfuckers that Obama's remark was made off the record, thus rendering her posed questions ("should the president be insulting pop stars?" and "what business is it of the presidents?") inoperative. And of course you stupid shit-for-brains don't follow the link to find out for yourselves. Maybe the ever-dull Althouse didn't bother reading enough of the story to find out that the comment was off the record, or maybe she's just dishonest.
You're stewing in a cesspool. And you like it!
And that's an example of the sort of comment I don't delete. I'm that into free speech. But Metlife deserves deletion and, as Lucid said, investigation by the Secret Service. I like to think the Secret Service is good enough that they are already on it.
Here's Bob Wright demonstrating the effect Bloggingheads is proposing to conceal identities — and make people look more interesting? — when pseudonymous commenters are turned into video personalities:
In the second part of that clip, Bob introduces the subject of a comments policy for his site, where, as he says, there've been "flame wars" lately. The main thing I've noticed is how much hate is thrown at me anytime I appear — often by people who load up the beginning of the thread with assertions that they will not watch the video because of me. Anyway, here's the draft of the comments policy they are proposing. I note Rule #2: "No rude comments aimed at diavloggers."
Like most superficially simple rules, this one is easier to state than to enforce fairly—one man’s verbal abuse is another man’s fair and accurate characterization. Here are some examples of what we’d label name-calling: moron, idiot, asshat, wingnut, moonbat, troll—and, absent very good evidence: racist. (To be clear: We don't proscribe the use of such words, only their use as epithets against other commenters, either directly or by implication.)
... In particular, avoid derogatory or demeaning remarks about physical appearance and speaking style. Don’t forget that many diavloggers read the comments section.
Don’t forget that many diavloggers read the comments section. LOL. Wasn't that the point of the rudeness?
... a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming... a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming... a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming....
Why a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming....?
Of all the images Maureen Dowd could conjure up for her alternate self — the self who cares what nasty strangers say — why a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming? It's got something to do with right-wing extremists, but I can't put my finger on what.
(I've quoted the first 2 sentences of what is a column about that model who sued the blogger who called her a skank. Dowd has nothing interesting to say on the subject of pseudonymity on the internet.)
Speaking out for the first time since a court order forced Google to reveal her identity, blogger Rosemary Port tells the Daily News that model Liskula Cohen should blame herself for the uproar.
"This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing," said Port, whose "Skanks in NYC" site branded the 37-year-old Cohen an "old hag."
"By going to the press, she defamed herself," Port said.
"Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it," Port said. "That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated."
But before you celebrate Port's seemingly wise anti-litigation statement, take note that she's suing Google... for $15 million federal lawsuit against the Web giant.
"When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected," Port said.
"But that right fell through the cracks. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."
In her suit, she'll charge Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity," said her high-powered attorney Salvatore Strazzullo.
"I'm ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court," Strazzullo said. "Our Founding Fathers wrote 'The Federalist Papers' under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously. Shouldn't that right extend to the new public square of the Internet?"
How hard did Google fight? Surely, there's no absolute right to hide your identity. Why should someone who commits the tort of defamation escape a lawsuit by hiding behind a pseudonym? It's not fair to the people who have the guts to show their names when they libel people. They get stuck being defendants in defamation suits.
The key is for courts to have a high standard in determining whether there really is defamation before they order that the name be revealed. Otherwise, someone who has not actually suffered a legally remediable injury can use a lawsuit for the wrong purpose: to inflict the injury of making a pseudonymous writer's name public.
Note that Liskula Cohen is now dropping her defamation suit against Port. That's good for Port. It's bad to be sued for $3 million. But it suggests that the disclosure of the name was the point of the lawsuit. Courts should not allow themselves to be used for that purpose. And Google's lawyers should fight hard to make courts see it that way.
[Y]es – I criticized [Ed] Whelan rather harshly. But that’s what the blogosphere is about. Blogging is not for the thin-skinned. And you would think that someone who spends their days trying to destroy other people’s reputations in dishonest and inflammatory ways wouldn’t be so childish and thin-skinned.
Anyway, I’m not sure whether I’ll start posting under my own name or not. And there were several people who already knew – it’s not like this is a state secret. But still, if I wanted my name out on this blog, I would have done so. It should have been my choice.
Here's Ed Whelan, exposing "publius" in the National Review. On what grounds?
In the course of a typically confused post yesterday, publius embraces the idiotic charge (made by “Anonymous Liberal”) that I’m “essentially a legal hitman” who “pores over [a nominee’s] record, finds some trivial fact that, when distorted and taken totally out of context, makes that person look like some sort of extremist.” In other of his posts (including two which I discussed here and here), publius demonstrated such a dismal understanding of the legal matters he opined on—including, for example, not understanding what common law is—that it was apparent to me that he had never studied law.
Well, I’m amused to learn that I was wrong about publius’s lack of legal education....
Whelan wanted to do a "you a law professor" attack on his opponent. You've got to establish that the person is a law professor first, of couse, but it's not really worth doing, especially if the blogger isn't using his status as lawprof to bolster his opinion.
"You a law professor" attacks are a running joke here on my blog, because they've been aimed at me so often. I don't flaunt my status as a lawprof, but I know it's part of the sense of what this blog is. Even so, I think "you a lawprof" is a pretty lame argument, normally wielded by opponents who don't want to bother making substantive points. It's about on the level of proclaiming you're a moron.
I think blogging anonymity is fine — though in the absence of a track record I tend to trust anonymous bloggers less — but is it a “despicable” act to identify an anonymous blogger? I’d say it depends. Certainly the political operative who leaked the Foleygate story via an anonymous blog had no right to anonymity. On the other hand, what about people who blog in a non-hitjob fashion but just want to avoid job repercussions? I’m more sympathetic there. But if you appoint yourself someone’s anonymous blogging nemesis, you can probably expect to be outed.
I think you should expect it and be fully aware of the risk, but it would take a lot before I would feel justified exposing someone who had chosen the cloak of pseudonymity, certainly something quite different from the usual name-calling, insults, and bad arguments and criticisms, no matter how unfair or vicious.
Publius now needs to decide if he wants to merge his professional identity with his blogging identity and blog under his own name. This is a subject I examined back here, responding a lawprof colleague of mine who had chosen pseudonymity. I said:
Oscar wants to be free to use naughty words and otherwise break out of the professorial mode. But my experience is that even though students know who I am and can and do read this blog, they seem to accept this as a separate mode of mine and don't use it as a basis for talking to me in a newly confidential way. In the law school, the student-professor relationship is very well established. It really doesn't break down, even when students read your personal journal.
Of course, there are things I won't say here, but these are things I wouldn't say even if I used a keyboard name. I would never insult or demean or deliberately hurt the feelings of students. I wouldn't casually knock my law school (though there are some considered criticisms I would be willing to make). I wouldn't hurt my family or acquaintances or even reveal much of anything about them (without permission). So there aren't really any significant ways using my own name limits me. Like Oscar, I care immensely about freedom as I do this blogging. But I also want to be aware of myself as an identifiable person, responsible for what I say (which is true whether you use a pseudonym or not). And I don't mind getting personal credit for anything good I might happen to say. Also, I kind of like being a public persona.
... Anthony Ciolli, a University of Pennsylvania Law School graduate and former chief education director at AutoAdmit, can press ahead with his lawsuit against Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley, who worked as counsel at San Francisco-based Keker & Van Nest, two Yale Law School students and others.
Ciolli's lawsuit claims that he was wrongly included as a defendant in a case brought in June 2007 by the two law students, who alleged that AutoAdmit defamed them on its discussion board. He also claims that Boston-based Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge rescinded its offer of full-time employment because of the alleged connection between him and the statements about the women.....
Named as defendants in his suit are Heide Iravani and Brittan Heller, the former Yale law students; and ReputationDefender, a public relations firm that represented the students. Also named are Lemley; Keker & Van Nest; the Los Angeles-based law firm Rosen & Associates; and attorney David Rosen. Lemley and Rosen were attorneys for the students.
Ciolli's lawsuit alleges wrongful initiation of civil proceedings, abuse of process, libel, slander, false-light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with contract and unauthorized use of name or likeness.
A huge reason not to sue someone: He'll sue you back. How awful!
I saw in the UW student newspaper that "The popular college gossip site JuicyCampus.com will come to an end Thursday because of its inability to support itself financially." The company says: "In these historically difficult economic times, online ad revenue has plummeted and venture capital funding has dissolved." Times are tough on line. I'd like some ads too. (Or help me and stimulate the economy by buying this spiffy new Nikon (using that link).)
But there was more going on with JuicyCampus now, I seem to remember. Here's Fox News:
A Web site that publishes anonymous, sometimes malicious gossip about college students has agreed to cease operations....
The shutdown comes nearly a year after New Jersey authorities subpoenaed the company as part of a probe to determine if the site was failing to comply with rules requiring users to agree not to post abusive or obscene content.
The site's operator, which denied any wrongdoing, was also facing a federal lawsuit filed by a University of Delaware student from New Jersey, who wanted to find out who was responsible for posting gossip about her on the site.
You don't need to win a lawsuit to defeat your antagonist.
