QUOTE(Silver seren @ Sun 29th May 2011, 11:55pm)
Yeah, internet anonymity seems to be heading toward an end. I used to make fun of Canada because of Stephen Harper trying to make internet anonymity illegal (and then not really doing anything about it), but we're not really that much better here.
It may be too early to say "I told you so," but this is very close to what I've been going on about for five years now.
Politicians are stupid, and court judges aren't that much smarter, at least when it comes to "new media." They're not going to want to make the distinction between anonymous blog commenters and anonymous encyclopedia-article-editors, or even between anonymous participants (in interactive websites) and anonymous
readers. They're just going to want to do what their corporate-lobby masters want them to do, and that means fewer rights and less privacy for you, more rights and more profits for
them.Meanwhile, website operators like the WMF will continue to abuse (or allow the abuse of) the advantages that user-anonymity gives them, until it's ultimately taken away almost completely. Sure, "hacktivists" and other anonymous subcultures will continue to exist, but Wikipedia isn't some underground organization - without its heavy traffic and (related) Google-dominance, it could fade into second-tier status very quickly.