Anonymous Speech, Trolls and the Internet

This week's in-class exercise dealt with the recent outing of the Reddit troll, Violentacrez, by Gawker.  After reading a lengthy article by Forbes writer Kashmir Hill about the outing and the resulting controversy on the web the students were divided into three groups of five students each to discuss and vote on how to answer the following:

If you were the internet King-For-A-Day and had the power to dictate the rules of the internet regarding anonymity on the web and mete out punishment for anyone who violated those rules would you

     1.  allow anonymous internet speech in all circumstances and on all subjects and let the web                  

          community itself police any abuses?

     2.  allow anonymous speech, but only in certain circumstances and for certain subjects? 

          If yes, identify the circumstances or subjects.

     3.  ban anonymous speech entirely and require the use of real names, and

     4.  punish Michael Brutsch (Violentacrez) further or has he been punished enough.  If further

          punishment is warranted what would that punishment be?

After a vigorous discussion, here is where the groups ended up:

      Group 1 would not allow any anonymous speech on the internet, primarily because anonymity 

(1) fosters a lack of accountability (2)  encourages reckless behavior and the spreading of falsehoods and (3) allows persons to use speech as a weapon with no consequences.

     Group 3 reflected the opposite perspective and opted to allow anonymous speech in all circumstances, primarily because (1) the internet should be the one communications platform where people should be totally free to express themselves without fear of reprisal and (2) trying to define when anonymity should and should not be allowed was too problematic and potentially could end up free speech being granted in a discriminatory or unequal fashion.

     Group 2 adopted a middle of the road approach, generally allowing anonymous speech except in those circumstances where the anonymous speech would otherwise be deemed unlawful by another  law such as in cases of libel, harassment, discrimination, cyber bullying, etc.  A total ban on anonymous speech would unnecessarily restrict civil liberties and have a chilling effect on the expression of unpopular or minority opinions. 

     All of the groups believed Brutsch had suffered enough and would not impose any further punishment, although there was a strong sentiment that public shame alone was an insufficient punishment and they would have opted for additional punishment had he not been fired from his job.

Next week we talk about freedom of the press.