A skank discussion: Privacy, anonymity, and misogyny

24.08.2009
In response to last week's post about former supermodel Liskula Cohen forcing Google to give up the identity of an anonymous blogger (""), I got a couple of e-mails that are worth exploring in a little more depth. So here goes.

[ See where it started for Cringely: "" | Stay up to date on Robert X. Cringely's musings and observations with InfoWorld's . ]

The first comes from Cringester S. P. about the differences between privacy, anonymity, and responsibility:

It's not really about privacy I think. If you loan a stranger your car after requiring certain info about the driver, and he drives it, say, for the purpose of displaying a political message, but he hits someone with it and then runs, the victim would want you to disclose what you know about the driver. Should you be permitted to withhold that info just because the driver was going to use the car to display political messages?

I'm not arguing that anonymous bloggers should be allowed to say whatever they please about whomever they please. Journalists certainly can't, not without the threat of a defamation suit. Why should bloggers be different?

At the same time, I'm a little hinky about giving up all possibility of anonymity on the Net. There are times when shielding your identity is literally a matter of life and death (though not in the case of the author of the Skanks in NYC blog). It's the old slippery slope argument: How do you protect anonymity for some but not all?