If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

man with paper bag on head To The Case of Blogger AnonymityIn a landmark case that was filed against a blogger in Great Britain, a British court ruled that there was no case for that blogger’s identity to remain anonymous. He worked a public servant on the police force, but operated a blog called Night stalker, chronicling the police injustices he was witnessing.

The officer also criticized and ridiculed “a number of senior politicians” and advised members of the public under police investigation to “complain about every officer . . . show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it”. His blog had close to half a million readers on some of the more salacious articles, but Justice Eady said that the mere fact that the blogger wanted to remain anonymous did not mean that he had a “reasonable expectation” of doing so or that The Times was under an enforceable obligation to him to maintain that anonymity.

Now what if this kind of a decision was to take place here in the United States? There are hundreds of thousands of blogs and opinion pages on the net and there is no way to maintain a constant government presence on all of them. This is why the net was to be, and remain neutral. It is a breeding ground of thoughts and ideas, if we are going to threaten the identity of some the most outspoken on the web, then we are going to lose a valuable part of the alternative media.

The net is not main stream for a reason, a lot of ideas that are put forth are out there and bizarre, and it is the readers choice to dig deeper, or to pass it up and look for another angle. This ruling in Britain is only the start of censorship in the US; if we as a people do not start standing up for the rights that are afforded us in the Constitution. The right to speak out without the right to anonymity will put many in jeopardy, and will be a very sad day indeed.

-Earl Sanchez

Sighting for this article was provided by:
technology.timesonline.co.uk

yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/17/1625215/British-Court-Rules-Against-Blogger-Anonymity?from=rss