The Glade 4.0

Both decisions are disturbing. I'm conflicted on the Yelp one.

I rely heavily on online reviews, and yet when I'm looking through a set of reviews, and one review seems to exhibit far different features than all the others, for instance, if one review is really bad and describes a customer service experience far different from the other 246 reviews, i tend to shrug it off to competitors spreading false information. (or, conversely, the proprietor putting in fake good reviews).

I really wish there was a way to pierce this dishonest practice and hold the people posting reviews accountable for them.

But in the end, I value privacy too much to side with this decision.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Just pointing out - privacy isn't what you value, it's anonymity. If you keep your opinion private then you have no issue.

I'm thinking that while someone has a right for their privacy, there really isn't any straightforward "right" of anonymity.

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In time, this too shall pass.

So then during election time your votes shouldn't be counted unless your name is attached publicly with them because thats just an anonymous system.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

The internet is simply another public square.

You can say whatever you want in the public square. You can say your piece without disclosing who you are, but you don't have a right to have your identity protected. If I recognize you, I can out you with no consequences.

Government should not be involved in either protecting your anonymity nor revealing your identity. They should be neutral. If you can protect it, great. If not, oh well.

Don't play with hypothetical arguments, just show me anything in the constitution that says you have an enumerated, overarching right to be anonymous. You know, like a right that not only the government has to recognize but everyone must recognize.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Well, technically speaking, most of the rights enumerated in the Constitution just constrain the government, not everyone else. That aside, you're right that there's no specifically enumerated right to anonymity. Nor, for that matter, is there an explicit right to privacy. In both cases, those rights are implied by and/or corollary to the enumerated rights of free speech and freedom from unreasonable searches.

The Tenth Amendment.

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Exactly. Not that I don't value anonymity, I do, it's just that it's not something someone else will protect for me - it's something I have to protect for myself.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The government is forcing Yelp to disclouse.

Hence: government.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

So, that's more evidence that there's no right of anonymity. Tacit evidence, but evidence nonetheless.

You don't usually make my argument for me. I don't mind, just... kinda feels funny.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Indeed. But if they legally force a website to reveal the identity of the people posting reviews, they are getting involved, yes?

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Ummm ...

The Net Neutrality ruling means the internet is not a public square.

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Yes, but... it gives the FCC the authority to reclassify the internet as a public square if it chooses to do so. The ruling on Net Neutrality gives the FCC carte blanche to reclassify internet providers, but under the way they are currently classified, the net neutrality legislation is not legal.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

^- Yep

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/15/53119 ... e-internet

One thing confuses me about your position. Wouldn't the refusal of the court to allow this regulation fall into the "let the market regulate itself" category you normally support?

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In time, this too shall pass.

The FCC lost the battle and won the war this week: the Net Neutrality component of the ruling is rather trivial. The ruling gave the FCC wholesale authority to regulate the Internet, and the Internet is a special snowflake. It is a global idea marketplace that depends on the free, and yes, sometimes anonymous, exchange of ideas to have meaningful value. The Internet decentralizes the knowledge base of the world and makes it more difficult, inordinately more so, for the governments of the world to regulate information.

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I have less concern with issues like this than some other acts the government has taken that reduce my anonymity on the internet.

Anonymous reviews on the internet these days can determine the financial outcome of a business venture. If I were a business person and I was sinking my blood, sweat and tears into some venture or some such and I got wrongly blasted on-line and my business suffered as a result, it's possible that I might be willing to seek some sort of judgement from the courts.

In such cases, I'd expect the courts to facilitate my right to face my accuser. Now, preventing this from becoming a way to intimidate legitimate criticism looks to be a ride down a really slippery slope, I'm just glad I'm not the one having to maintain the balance.

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In time, this too shall pass.

so the ruling states that the way the Internet is currently classified prevents the FCC from ruling the way it did. it doesn't seem like too difficult of a fix to redefine the Internet as it pertains to this regulation. until we realize the millions upon millions of dollars that the ISPs will throw at it not being changed.

The FCC I would assume is just going to change their rules to include them.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

One thing to keep in mind here:

America is not the Internet.

America does not control the Internet.

Even American countries that have international presence on the Internet have international subsidiaries that follow different rules in different countries. The NSA can't make Google-USA turn over communications that originated in Google-Russia that travel to Google-Canada. Google-USA never had access to those communications, and they never travelled across networks based in or touching the USA. Which isn't to say they don't have other ways of getting that information - my point is Google happily turns over requested communications in the USA when asked. But the USA is not the Internet.

For this to have meaningful impact to the Internet as a whole, other countries need to get in line the same as the USA. If they don't follow suit, and the Internet becomes as draconian a controlled space as the worst case scenarios predict, then the USA's portion of the Internet becomes a big black hole that everyone else routs around unless they need to specifically go there for something.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

If your business takes a hit because of anonymous reviews, how is that any differently than your business taking a hit from word-of-mouth?

You want governments out of the internet regulation business.

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I don't think it is. I'd expect the courts to help facilitate the resolution of the dispute in that case too.

Thing is, if my competition was spreading lies about my business, doing so face to face (or mouth to mouth, if you will) allows me to trace the lie back to them.

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In time, this too shall pass.

It actually doesn't.

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one could argue that the internet is a print media, making it the difference between libel & slander.

I'm not entirely sure that's true in any material sense.

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The internet is considered a published medium in that sense, already.

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