At 5:23 PM -0700 4/20/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>Here's an interesting article.
>
>In this one, a US District Judge says explicitly that
>the first amendment does apply to the internet and that
>people DO have a right to anonymous speech online.
>
>The case involved a company claiming that users of a
>chatroom had "conspired" to drive its stock price down
>so that they could profit by shorting the stock. The
>company demanded of the operators of the chatroom the
>identities of the people involved. The judge refused.
These cases, and the reporting of them, are filled with much
confusion and mischief.
The First Amendment says that government (originally the Federal, now
states) may not censor material, may not practice prior restraint,
may not establish religions, and so on. (Usual exceptions and
conditions we often get into.)
It does _not_ say that writings may not be compelled to be disclosed
in a court case, it does _not_ say that witnesses may not be
subpoenaed, and it most certainly does _not_ say that John Doe, who
may be a chatroom sysop or ISP, is somehow exempt from producing
subpoenaed material in a criminal or civil trial!
I'm all for the technologies of anonymity and pseudoanymity, and
outlawing such technologies is unconstitutional on various grounds.
But if John Doe, a sysop, _knows_ facts about "Tentacle of Medusa," a
nym on his system, and this information is compelled by the discovery
process, there is certainly no First Amendment protection.
We need to do our part to stop this kind of confusion. More people
might be using *technological* means to protect their identity and
privacy if they had less misplaced faith in the law protecting them.
--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
