Tim May wrote:
In fairness to Berman, in 1985 very few people were thinking seriously about these issues, and Chaum's paper (presumably the one published that year in "Communicatons of the ACM") was probably seen as far-off technology then.
I'd be more interested to see Berman's more recent views on online anonymity.
It might well be that in 1985 he saw little hope for technological solutions, and understandably placed more faith in legislative solutions.
Now that the technology for anonymity is widely deployed, this situation has changed.
I think we've all been thru this before, with the Esther Dyson flap and so on. That was then, this is now. Online anonymity was not much of a real issue ten years ago, and I doubt most readers had formed much of an opinion on it. On private BBSes it was prevelant, and on academic and corporate networks it was virtually nonexistant. As these networks began to merge, not surprisingly people came down on both sides of the issue, but their opinions were backed more by convention than by the facts of the situation. I think that as time has progessed, people have come to see the reasons behind it. Five years ago, there was considerable debate over whether anon.penet.fi should exist, today almost everyone takes for granted the right to post anonymously. For all the animosity he has caused, Spamford Wallace has shown us why you don't want people to know your email address. Some of you may remember the comments made on the list by a certain law professor, who said he wouldn't post to usenet because he didn't want to get junk mail. In hindsight we can laugh at that remark in light of the obvious solution.