Re: more ideas on anonymity

[George A. Gleason <gg@well.sf.ca.us>]

Re your posting on categories of offenses and so on.  Agreed strongly that
sites should post banners stating the policies they adhere to.  I'd suggest
the following division of offenses:

1) Anything involving physical violence, threats of violence, incitement to
violence.  (this includes acts such as rape, pedophelia etc., since these
acts involve power as much as anything and can be seen as primarily violent
acts)  (this also includes things like Nazi propaganda where there is a
historic precedent or strong undertone that violent acts are encouraged)

2) Other (not violent) crimes against persons or property.  

3) Antisocial or questionable actions such as victimless crime, propagation
of lies (for instance a faked Challenger transcript), violation of Net
rules.

Obviously these have descending levels of severity by most reasonable
standards.  I would not in any way make sysops or admins responsible for
postings which may be illegal in their country of origin: both for pragmatic
reasons (no one can possibly be held to know the laws in all the other
participating countries) and for ethical reasons (stalinist coup in Russia;
fascist consolidation in ex-Yugoslavia, now you have to play cop against
dissidents from both; no thanks!).  

I believe unpopular opinions ought to be protected as long as they don't
encourage illegal or violent actions.  The test case for this is racism or
some equivalent.  If someone wants to argue a case that their race is the
Master Race or whatnot, I can't see squelching them for making opinion-noise
unless they're also e.g. advocating violence.  Once we get in the
opinion-censoring biz, it's a steep slippery slope.  OTOH, we also shouldn't
be an arm of LE, and hence the idea that discussing victimless crimes ought
to be a very bottom-of-the-list kind of thing.  

-gg