Anonymous speech takes another round of legislative beating as Kentucky state lawmaker Tim Couch pushes a bill that would make anonymous speech on the internet as far as the state of Kentucky is concerned illegal. While it is fairly obvious that this will be shot down in the federal courts if not the Supreme Court, these continual efforts are starting to wear thin.

The proposal by Couch is that internet sites will need to have people register their real names, real e-mail addresses, and in general no longer be protected by any form of anonymity on the internet. At least as far as Kentucky is concerned.

At this point, we still have at least some constitutional freedoms that have not been completely undermined, passing this law will further erode the freedoms that we do enjoy under the constitution. Do we really need more legislative do-gooding concerning cyber bullying?

Cyber bullying, something that has been an issue in the past, and will continue to be an issue in the future. It is hardly likely by any stretch of the imagination that the millions of blogs, web sites, forums and other sites that take user input are dealing with an always honest market. People may want to be anonymous because they have to be, out of fear of retaliation for dropping a bomb like the recent debacle about WikiLeaks.

There is no way to stop cyber bullying, or any form of bullying. This has been something that has been with us for a very long time. While the idea of doing something to save people pain, or worst yet, death threats, death, ruin of reputation, or vindictive significant others is compelling in favor of stifling the ability to comment on line anonymously on line. There are equally compelling reasons to allow this very action from again, sites like WikiLeaks, sites about government abuse, fraud, truly fraudulent businesses, security issues, and getting information out of countries that have no worries about trying to kill off free speech.

You have to weigh the good with the bad, and decide which side needs to be heard in the longer run. While we would naturally tend to side on the favor of people being responsible for themselves, and not do anything to incite a riot, we also know that not everyone has that same ability to self censor. They see anonymous speech on the internet as a power trip, a way to damage someone, regain control over another, and not realizing the fallacy of their actions. The only way to address the power/ego structures around anonymous speech on line that is hateful and intended to harm is to set a societal standard against this kind of abuse.

We set these kinds of societal standards all the time, law enforces some of those standards because people will still break whatever rules are put forth. There are always malcontents in any system. Will the bill in Kentucky do anything other than demonstrate that the rules we have protecting anonymous speech are under assault, probably not. Will this make a sharper focus on something we must be debating nationally, yes.

We need a national debate on what protections we need or want on the internet. From Spam to Malware, Spyware, and cyber bullying, we need a commission to explore these issues, and come back with some form of sane balance between anonymity and self identification. Small fits and starts like we have seen over the last few years will not do it because it fails to balance constitutional freedoms against the knee jerk reaction in the “name of the children”.