Come to the Dark Side...

As a class, we have talked about the anonymity associated with the use of the Internet in both a positive light at in a negative one. I believe that that anonymity is the root of some of the issues such as trolling, flaming, cyber-bulling, surveillance, stalking, obscene relational intrusion, and other aspects of the Internet’s dark side.  The Internet is an outstanding tool for providing information to billions of users in the blink of an eye. However, that information is not always used for good purposes. Quite sadly there are numerous online “supportive communities” that encourage people with bulimia, anorexia, and other eating disorders. They provide the user with negative encouragement and attempt to make the user “better” at their disorder.  Similarly there is no shortage of how-to guides for creating everything from pipe bombs, homemade explosives, and drugs, all the way up to radicalization propaganda used by extremist militant groups trying to recruit people to fight in their religious war. All of these things are made possible by the fact that these accounts do not require real names or any sort of identification. All of this information can be posted without any regulations or regard for the affect that it will have. Humanity has shown that it is far more willing to lie if there is no reason that others have no idea who you actually are. Confrontations and arguments are far more common online compared to face-to-face interactions.

There have been numerous attempts to combat the problem using legislation and other technology based solutions. There have been several pieces of legislation proposed, but seldom few have passed. Additionally, the ones that have been passed did not last more than a few months.  One of the only successful ones was Statute 2257 that passed in 1988. This statute stated that all adult filmmakers had to keep records of their actors and by default, make sure that they were over eighteen years of age. The industry has had several very large problems in their attempts to regulate the dark side. The first issue is figuring out whose responsibility the Internet is. We have no current legal precedents that can identify an agency or law enforcement body that is obligated to step up.  The second major issue is that legislation runs into is the violation of the Right to Free Speech. It becomes exceedingly difficult for any agency to determine what is acceptable and what is not. Again, we have had many cases go to court and the findings are wildly inconsistent. There is no clear precedent that puts clear support to one side or the other.

Officials have also proposed technological solutions such as disenvowlment and putting restrictions on pseudonymity. Disenvowlment is simply a process in which the governing body identifies inappropriate content at removes all of the vowels the message contains. While it does not make the message unreadable, it makes the message less clear and less readily understood. They have tried to place restrictions on the amount of “pen names” someone can have also. However, this is exceedingly difficult because these names are only registered to a single email address. Despite several failed attempts, lawmakers are still trying to put together some solutions. As the technology evolves and advances, I think we will surely see new and innovative ways to police and regulate online content.