A Skank Discussion: Privacy, Anonymity and Misogyny

InfoWorld — In response to last week's post about former supermodel Liskula Cohen forcing Google to give up the identity of an anonymous blogger ("Skanks for nothing: Google must identify 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: "Skanks for nothing: Google must identify anonymous blogger" | Stay up to date on Robert X. Cringely's musings and observations with InfoWorld's Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]

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?

S. P. adds this point about Google's role in the whole affair:

If Google really wants to give bloggers anonymity, then they don't have to capture bloggers' IP addresses and require email addresses as a condition of using the blog creation service. BUT, Google voluntarily makes itself a prospective witness and a holder of information that others (who are not suing Google for damages) might need for separate litigation.

It's a fair point, and one that's been raised by others in the past. Why does Google hang on to users' personal information for months on end? If it has the power to simply wipe a blog out of existence (and it does), does it really need to record the blogger's IP address and e-mail?

The second response comes from B. R., who has quite a bone to pick regarding my "callousness" in reporting on this case. If I understand it correctly, in the following excerpt I am both "Mr. Anonymous" and "Mr. Whatever his name is."

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