[LINK] "The decaying anonymity of the Internet"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Andrew Steele speculates about the possibilities surrounding a certain Canadianization of the Internet, starting with the first successful legal prosecution against a member of the infamous 4Chan.

4Chan, the poster boy of anarchy on the web, is in fact a regulated place where one’s identity can be determined and legal consequences exacted.

According to testimony by founder Christopher Poole in the case of the 4Chan user who hacked Sarah Palin’s email account, there are significant opportunities to identify and prosecute users.

For instance, weblogs are maintained and will be provided to government officials following a request by law enforcement. They will show when a particular user made any posts, using their IP address, an identifier assigned for your computer when it logs on to a computer network.

The testimony lays out in detail how 4Chan and law enforcement can easily identify who is saying what on 4Chan by using logs and the IP addresses assigned by Internet service providers.

The anarchy of 4Chan – and the Internet generally – is both terrifying and astonishing. Certainly, the debates on the The Globe and Mail's comment board are legendary, both in their quality and occasional lapse into the personal and inappropriate.

But clearly, the illusion of anonymity is at the heart of that creative anarchy.

As the illusion begins to crumble – as those who use the Internet begin to run up against the reality of prosecution and incarceration for their crimes, or public humiliation for their ill-conceived statements – that anarchy may subside.

The creativity that comes with not caring about the consequences of what you say could end. Perhaps the Wild West Internet will soon begin to look a little more like Canada’s Prairie expansion, with the RCMP imposing some civility missing from the American experience.