I’ve just come back from an appearance before the Parliamentary Electoral Matters Committee Inquiry into the Conduct of the 2004 Federal Election and Matters
Related Thereto, where I presented a submission arguing that blogs, and commenters, should not be required to identify themselves when commenting during an election campaign. It was a pretty vigorous session, and some members of the Committee were clearly not convinced. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see an attempt to restrict anonymous Internet comment coming out of the Committee’s report.
My immediate analysis is that, if anonymous comments were prohibited, the only way to be safe would be to close down comments during election campaigns. Even if people gave full names and addresses, I don’t have the resources to verify them.
Anyway, it would be good to hear other views: I’ll need to think more about my own views.
My submission (PDF file) is over the fold
John Quiggin 
Trying to legally enforce non-anonymous commentary on Internet websites, blogs, and the like would be an utterly foolish thing to do. Apart from being practically impossible to enforce, it would also be practically impossible for bloggers to adhere to such requirements.
Put simply it could kill much of the blogosphere.
First of all we’ll need a martyr to go to gaol for a bit until they agree that their laws are irrelevant to the internet. Are you up for that Quiggs?
More seriously if you look at it one way only the blog would need to be authorised as technically speaking if the comments were moderated they could be regarded as the opinion of the publisher
What about callers to talk back radio? Or talk back pay TV? Do they have to give full name and addresses when providing elecion comments?
Free markets lead to free people, but obviously not free press. 😐
I’m torn.
I flirted with anonymity right at the outset years ago, but realised I wanted people to know it was me who said this or that, that I had thought things thru enough to be able to defend my positions, that I was proud enough of my hard won opinions that I would own up to them. Plus I felt a bit cowardly having a pop at someone from behind a nom de plume. So I assumed my own identity again and instantly felt better.
But I hesitate to agree with making such candour mandatory. People have their reasons and I have read brilliant comments by anonymouses all over the blogosphere, comments that may not have been made without cover. The worth of a comment does not reside in it’s provenance.
But… I do wonder if the proper functioning of our democracy means that electoral comment (really, political comment generally during election campaigns – and who decides what is and isn’t, and when this season starts and ends?) needs a paper trail. I’m talking about the danger not so much of official political spam (vote 1 for Ketter, he’s mad as a hatter) but of the insidious flooding of political fora, including blogs like this, of slanted comments that appear to be unrelated, from different monikers in different cities using different locutions and tropes – but all hewing religiously to stances and attitudes useful to one party or other. It’s normally the right; they have a real feel for this sort of thing.
Of course they can be ignored, once, twice etc etc… but the net effect of loads of such stuff is to implant, even in unpromising soil like my brain, the impression of an overwhelming opposition to common sense and collective solutions among your fellows. If you were close to throwing your hands up and becoming apolitical, if you felt like yelling ‘OK Mr Howard you win, do what you like’, this sort of thing might do the trick. Resistance, even if you still think it right, might be seen as futile.
I’m not saying this is widespread in this country, yet. But I have seen examples detected on American blogs, where they were viewed as part of a wider propaganda campaign which included payola to several admin-friendly journos and ‘astroturf’ letter to the editor campaigns across the nation (where strangely similar paeans to Bushian resolve and manliness and/or expressions of regret at Democrat wimpiness appeared almost simultaneously)
I once tussled for an extended period with a Likudnik who called himself voice of sanity, on Gary Sauer Thompson’s blog. I came to the conclusion that he was Ted Lapkin, AIPAC functionary and reliably bloodthirsty Arab/Muslim hater. His denials were unconvincing, then he disappeared. Political parties have such functionaries oozing out of every pore – think Chrenkoff. But is the solution to demand disclosure of every participant in every forum, a measure that seems to limit one freedom while ensuring another?
As I said, I’m torn.
I have not read the law, but how can they enforce anything if the site is hosted overseas? I guess that most bloggers go for price (given the same level of service) when looking for hosting. This probably means that most bloggers host their blogs overseas.
In addition, considering blogs formal advertising is ludicrous, unless the publisher is clearly affiliated to a party (e.g., a legal representative of the party).
This is the sort of regulations that make me wonder if we have a rational government at all.
It’ll take a while yet for our political lords and masters to catch up with the 21st century. Eventually they will, and it will be realised that 19th century frameworks for publication and public discourse etc aren’t particularly relevant any more.
Who are we remaining anon from? the owner (or publisher) of the blog or the readers (or both)?
It could be possible to do what the SMH webdiary does which is you can have your post published anonymously but you have to provide your name to the editors. I suppose you could get around this by giving them a real name which isn’t yours.
Wasn’t it the High Court that over-turned the media blackout on commercial advertising just before an election? A sad mistake since they probably, never realised, how saturation brainwash might influence an election. Authorised by fred nurk, parliament house,canberra………. in almost one and half seconds.
Maybe , some similar address ,could be organised locally or overseas for anonymooses of the blog variety.
Luis, if it’s published by an Australian (whether or not it’s in Australia), wouldn’t that make it illegal? Very few things on the Internet are anonymous to the sysadmins involved anyway, and so long as it was hosted by a friendly nation I imagine it’d be reasonably easy for the Government to identify the anons.
IIRC didn’t an Australian court find that an Australian businessman could sue an American company (or at least the Australian branch thereof) for defamation that was illegal in Australia, but not in America, published on their site hosted in America? I thought the logic involved was that the publication occurred where the reception was, or something silly like that. (I don’t know the details though, nor how it ended.)
“didn’t an Australian court find that an Australian businessman could sue an American company”
This was the Gutnick case and came up in discussion at the hearings.
However, I doubt that overseas hosting services will respond to Australian government requests to identify their clients.
i’ll do it Albatross! then i won’t have to sit the HSC…
JQ,
I read your submission and agreed with your arguments.
I particularly liked your reference to johnhowardlies.com. I can imagine certain committee members grinding their teeth when confronted with this evidence of the potential reach of free speech liberated from the monitoring hand of editorial policy of the capitalist press.
One element of the blog that you didn’t mention is its persistence.
Newspaper comments are conceded not to have the quality of persistence. Yesterday’s offering by News Corp is today’s fish wrapper. Yet it is possible for all of us to read back copies in a library. Does political comment made in a newspaper carry with it a retrospective capacity to fall foul of the electoral Act? Of course not.
But blogs, such as your own, are usually archived. Threads begun months ago are often resurrected by an additional comment. Does that mean that all political comment made before the calling of an election would have to be named and addressed retrospectively? Merely to state this possibility is to demonstrate its absurdity.
It ought to be noted that clamping down on the internet while liberalising talkback comment looks too much like the behaviour of right-wing meddling in the market of free expression to be coincidental.
J.Q , sounds like a good business idea for East Timor. Like the suisse look after ill-gained funds.
Maybe, they could provide private hosting services for Australians.
And, help out our burgeoning democracy where free speech is under threat. It might ,yet, prove a valuable commodity.
Mind you ,my argument on free speech goes to nought. I cannot support vilification of races,religions etc……pretty tricky,for sure!
Shutting down anonymous commentary would be hopeless, as well as an unnecessary attack on free speech. But I expect nothing more of our lousy politicians.
If they try it, I for one will make a point of commenting via IP anonymizers on overseas-hosted blogs. Stick it up the pricks.
Most people are well aware of the presence of internet astroturf. If they’re going to be swayed in their decision-making by anonymous internet commentary, they’re going to be swayed just as easily by cheap political stunts and meaningless promises by the politicians. Which is worse?
What a coincidence. I was just reading tonight about a system designed to (among other things) authenticate blog commenters. It’s at http://openid.net/. I won’t go into the detail here except to say that to a reasonably security-savvy geek it looks quite promising. It wouldn’t necessarily identify the commenter with a name, but it would associate them with a URL (e.g. johnquiggin.com). It certainly appears to make impersonating people using the system difficult.
More generally, my thoughts on the topic are that there should be no difference between how the internet and other media are regulated, except in extremely compelling circumstances. I haven’t seen any such circumstances yet, and I don’t really expect to.
The question of anonymity is tougher though, and it’s not an internet-specific issue. Political anonymity has been seen to have bad as well as good affects, e.g. the KKK and white hoods. Like all things, it can be misused, but I rarely favour banning something just because it can be used by the wrong people; there has been far too much of that sort of hysteria in the post-9/11 world as it is.
From a strategic viewpoint, I suspect that those on the political right are better able to use (misuse?) anonymity through astroturf campaigns etc.
John’s point about there being no real implications for people putting out misleading material even in the print world is well made. I have certainly seen unauthorized and very misleading material distributed the afternoon before an election to stop the sitting member that it more-or-less defamed from being able to respond. That was exactly the sort of material that I would have thought the legislation should cover, so it wouldn’t appear to be very effective anyway.
Perhaps going down a different legal avenue is the answer. Instead of requiring people to reveal their identities, wouldn’t it be better to require people to reveal the source of the material they are parroting?
I think that in general a much more stringent interpretation of IP laws should apply to all media to the point where the “news” you read in your daily paper has to be acknowledged in the story as the verbatim reproduction of press releases if that is all the reporter has done. For example the paper should write: “In a press release, Jo Bloggs is quoted as saying, ‘Yah de yah de yah.'”
Similarly in an anonymous blog: “According to a briefing sheet given me by the Don’t Vote For That Bastard Campaign, Joe Bloggs ‘deliberately frightens old ladies by pretending he’s going to run them over on the pedestrian crossing.'”
As an aside, I note you have the Creative Commons logo on your page, and CC takes away the ability to go down that path, because the provider of the material can simply license it as being free for reproduction without acknowledgement.
Commenting on a blog is more akin to yelling out “What about the workers” or “Bullshit” from the back of a public meeting with a pollie than print or tv.
I’d be interested to know which of the MPs on the Committee were antagonistic to you John – I’ll read the Hansard when it appears on the Committee website in the next few days. I don’t know how strongly this notion is being pursued within the Government or by Committee Members, but I’ll see what I can find out.
I gave a few of my views on this on my site a few months back and they haven’t advanced greatly since. I do see some logic is having similar treatment in the law towards electoral material in all communication mediums, but I can’t see the point in having to authorise or verify the identity of all letters to the editor, talkback callers, etc either – so prohibiting anonymity (or pseudonyms) on blog comments seems overkill.
I’m in two minds about whether the author of a blog that contains electoral comment should have to have it authorised (which could be done in the name of someone else) – I know it has major enforceability problems, but there is the consistency within the law argument and some of the points Glenn Condell makes have validity too.
I might content myself with absorbing peoples’ views on this at the moment and getting a better sense of whether the idea is likely to have legs.
The knowledge economy is too difficult to regulate, and anonymous comments are part of the wide knowledge economy. Five percent of Australians are in the diaspora at any one time, and they are politically active. Restricting political speech in Australia will not stop the diaspora.
This whole issue stemmed from political retribution for johnhowardlies.com with Abetz serving as Howard’s attack dog in the media. But for every johnhowardlies.com there will rise a flash advocacy group with a website, johnhowardtruths.com; and those two competing sites will add to the public debate, not interfere with it.
This is about politicians and parties trying to control political speech. It is about managing their image, and message, without interference from the unwashed masses. Politicians are the last people who should be deciding on restrictions to political speech. They should all recuse themselves from this issue.
I am against anything which restricts my political speech, whether as Cameron Riley or as anonymous pundit.
“As an aside, I note you have the Creative Commons logo on your page, and CC takes away the ability to go down that path, because the provider of the material can simply license it as being free for reproduction without acknowledgement.”
Not so: my license specifies share-alike as well as attribution, so any reproduction must acknowledge the source. More on this point, soon, I hope.
Andrew, the main questioning came from Daryl Melham and George(?) Brandis. Both clearly disagreed with me, though I wouldn’t describe Melham as being antagonistic.
Exactly right FX, pehaps at its most extreme it’s akin to that bloke who dropped a load of cheese at Howard’s feet at the last election as some potent symbol of expiration. I still really don’t understand what that guy was on about.
Another threat to the blogosphere, if I may venture off topic just slightly, is the effortless fashion in which election candidates can launch private prosecutions for criminal defamation. One of which cost me $15,000 in non-recoverable legal costs between October and March.
“As an aside, I note you have the Creative Commons logo on your page, and CC takes away the ability to go down that path, because the provider of the material can simply license it as being free for reproduction without acknowledgement.�
As I read it, the CC license affects John’s posts but not necessarily the comments; unless it is specifically set as a condition for posting. However, what would happen with the archived posts and comments, where there was no such agreement.
I can’t see any realistic and workable solution to ID posters. IP addresses is not sufficient. For example, I work for an organisation that is part of the Tasmanian government, and ALL government organisations are using the same IP range. Thus, if you see the number could be Parliament, the Public library (with its terminals open to the public), etc.
In addition, what is wrong with anonymity? I doubt that international hosting services would be willing to divulge customers’ information for such a stupid requirement.
Dear JQ,
Thanks for investing your time and effort in this matter. It is greatly appreciated.
I’m like Glenn – I don’t like anonymity, and don’t practice it myself. I think it encourages wildly inaccurate and indefensible commentary. If someone has something to say, as a general rule I think they ought also to put their name to it.
Having said that, there is a fundamental problem in relation to our current legal system that makes anonymity more (not less) desirable when an election is underway – which is the state of defamation law here.
Commentary about public figures can often be shut down by the threat of legal action – even though it is precisely the public figures who should be more subject to scrutiny and commentary when they do something wrong, and it is precisely in the election period when commentary about public figures is most desirable and most likely. The US has a more enlightened approach to defamation law in this regard – as I understand it, it is hard in the US to be found guilty of defaming someone in the public eye (unless malice is involved).
This also raises an issue about the way in which the Parliament conducts piecemeal inquiries about subjects with limited terms of reference that make it hard to put the issues in their overall context. Ideally, in the interests of democracy, we would have an inquiry into how to achieve better protection of freedom of speech and less protection of politicians. I’m not entirely confident [irony alert!!!] that our politicians would conduct such an inquiry.
It would be unenforceable; a bit like the recent local council by-law that no plume of smoke from a domestic chimnet exceed 10 metres.
Can you imagine some inspector up a ladder trying to hold a tape to the end of a plume?
It would be thrown out for lack of substantial evidence.
By its very nature the internet is anonymous and identity is revealed only by choice of the sender.
Obviously I disagree. But I think it is a personal choice.
For me, anonymous posting gives far greater freedom. I am free to express my opinion in any way I choose, without worrying about the opprobrium of my peers, or attracting unnecessary attention to any of the organizations with which I am associated, or stressing about creating too much personal animosity. And I always have the option of posting non-anonymously.
Also, I like the fact that people are forced to take what I say on face-value. They have no context – except previous posts – so they cannot use all the crutches by which people usually decide whether to attach any weight to comments: authority, qualifications, reputation, etc. That may mean people prefer to ignore my comments, but since it is only my anonymous persona that is being ignored, what do I care?
Poll Bludger, What happened? and who brought it against you?
This is bullshit. The internet has been around during previous elections (the internet discussion boards were cookin’ around the 2001 Tampa/Children Overboard election). Howard, Abetz and those clowns are now slowly getting with the program, and looking to stomp on it. I agree with a commenter further up in this thread (sorry mate, I’m too lazy tonight to even SCROLL), if they are going to require every blogger and commenter to provide their street address, they should require that of every miserable whinger on the 3AW and other talkback programs. And verify it.