Legal Issues in Anonymity and Pseudonymity

The regulation of anonymous and pseudonymous communications promises to be one of the most important and contentious Internet-related issues of the next decade. Resolution of this controversy will have direct effects on the freedom of speech, the nature of electronic commerce, and the capabilities of law enforcement. The legal resolution of the anonymity issue also is closely bound up with other difficult and important legal issues: campaign finance laws, economic regulation, freedom of speech on the Internet generally, the protection of intellectual property, and general approaches to privacy and data protection law. The legal constraints on anonymous communication, and the constitutional constraints on those who would regulate it further, thus should be considered in tandem with the policies animating regulation and also their side effects.     

Technology for Anonymity: Names by Other Nyms

This document provides a summary of some of the technical solutions for producing anonymous communication on the Internet and presents an argument that anonymity is as much a part of crime prevention as requiring people to provide their names.     

Anonymity versus commitment: The dangers of education on the internet

I shall translate Kierkegaard's account of the dangers and opportunities of what he called the Press into a critique of the Internet so as to raise the question: what contribution -- for good or ill -- can the World Wide Web, with its ability to deliver vast amounts of information to users all over the world, make to educators trying to pass on knowledge and to develop skills and wisdom in their students? I will then use Kierkegaard's three-stage answer to the problem of lack of involvement posed by the Press -- his claim that to have a meaningful life the learner must pass through the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious spheres of existence -- to suggest that only the first two stages -- the aesthetic and the ethical -- can be implemented with Information Technology, while the final stage, which alone makes meaningful learning possible, is undermined rather than supported by the tendencies of the desituated and anonymous Net.     

Information Privacy in the Marketspace: Implications for the Commercial Uses of Anonymity on the Web

While there is no question that the commercial development of the World Wide Web is still in its infancy and growing rapidly, this development faces a serious barrier to ultimate commercialization. In this article we develop the argument that the primary barrier to the successful commercial development of the Web is the current lack of consumer trust in this new commercial medium. This lack of trust is engendered primarily by the industry's documented failure to respond satisfactorily to mounting consumer concerns over information privacy in electronic, networked environments. We examine how such concerns are affecting the growth and development of consumer-oriented commercial activity on the World Wide Web and investigate the implications of these concerns for potential industry response. In the short run, the commercial development of the Web depends on giving consumers the opportunity to be anonymous when engaging in information exchanges and online transactions. Ultimately, however, commercial Web providers must come to realize that the Internet dramatically shifts the balance of power between a business and its customers, and therefore, radical new business strategies will be required for long-term success. Because the Web offers unprecedented opportunities for interacting with customers, strategies that take advantage of the medium's unique features are likely to reap important rewards in customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Therefore, in the long run, the most effective way for commercial Web providers to develop profitable exchange relationships with online customers is to gain consumer trust by allowing the balance of power to shift toward more cooperative interactions between firms and their customers.