Solutions to forum trolls (and possibly the future of the internet)

Well, the point of the article was that a lot of people would want that - specifically, copyright holders and anyone who works for them or owns stock in their companies. Reducing or eliminating internet anonymity would not eliminate piracy but it would bring it much closer to conventional (trackable and prosecutable) theft.

Frankly, I wouldn't have a problem with that approach. I don't hide on the internet. I use the same nickname almost everywhere and even where my name is slightly different my "- Ash" signature or my avatar are reasonably distinctive. There have even been a couple times where I've done some assholish things and been called on it because of how traceable I am but I haven't changed my posting habits to make me any less accountable for my own behaviour. Personally, I wouldn't be giving up much except a little flair going from "Asharak" to "Asharak, Net User 15664676".

I'm mostly just playing devil's advocate here, by the way. I realize there would be a ton of real and significant legal and moral issues with trying to make everyone register on the internet and I think a lot of those objections would be pretty valid. I'm just pointing out that the idea isn't necessarily a total non-starter for everyone.

- Ash

Yeah I should have said "alot of people wouldn't want" not everyone.

Personaly, I enjoy some of the anonymity (not because I harass or do anything illegal mind you) its that you can act like someone your not for games a couple of hours a day.

I would not however obstruct any efforts and would probably end up enjoying -some- of the regulation after what has been going on with the US election. Every comment section anywhere had comments regarding the election regardless of topic.  

Maybe the "Big Brother" just makes me hesitant.

I did laugh my ass off at John Giabriel's Greater Internet ******* Theroy. 

Trolls can be banned. But once privacy is gone, it's gone for good, and you can bet the government will be all over that new "option". Not a fair trade at all, IMO.

Hi!

Yes, obviously you don't hide.

BR,  Iztok

I tried that beta stupidity detector, but somehow everything I thought should be flagged stupid was OK. I wonder what you have to type to get a false positive, and how long it will be before processors and linguistic software are strong enough to really do the job.

"Mary had a little lamb, its feets were gargling over Pradas" was "not likely to be stupid." At least the results wording is suitably tentative.

Yeah, I couldn't get it to flag anything as stupid either.

My 'nick' is actually my True Name, in contrast to my incarnation name. Both have meaing. My incarnation name means Man like unto God from the island of The Word. My True Name has two meanings: The Lord and Great Lord.

woah, things just got weird

Did you say

i don't think Iztok was accusing you of hiding but was instead just pointing to a funny bit of irony.

Anyway, I can't get to that link, my work computer is blocking that site. But i'll imagine what we're talking about. I don't think we'll ever see anything like a net-pin. My bet is the government has already thought of this but couldn't find a way to implement it.

Trolling (at least in and of itself) isn't illegal, last I checked. There's always going to be assholes, at least on the Internet, they can be banned. Do we really WANT more government regulation of the Internet? I sure don't. The Internet is the closest form of pure democracy in the world. Anyone's voice can be heard. You start bringing in government regulations on "trolling" and the government starts deciding what kind of speech is and is not acceptable. Idunno about you all, but I really don't trust them with that power.

While Kryo probably doesn't see much of it on Stardock's sites, I'm a moderator on a much larger site - as in hundreds of thousands of active users. Trolling by itself is annoying and easily handled by site staff. Unfortunately the actual illegal activities are much harder to deal with: stalking, harrassment, actual cyber bullying, underage porn, fun stuff like that. The problem is, the people who do crap like this switch IP addresses often enough that simply IP bans are insufficient. We used to have the Kill On Sight list, where any new account that even hinted at being the person in question was banned out of hand, but it was discontinued do to the high rate of false positives.

While I agree a national system would be too invasive, something needs to be done to reduce the layers of anonymity some people are currently abusing.

IP bans, for criminal activity.  It's a form of stupidity.  There should be an agency to call, track the fuckers down(it's almost always childs play), and charge them.  IP ban's are just the virtual form of Walmart telling a shoplifter they don't get to come back.  That has dick to do with handling illegal activity.  We just have a lazy shit law enforcement system that wont bother with petty stuff.  Someone has to die before they'll pay any attention.

I don't know what it considers stupid either,

IM'A FIRIN' MA LAZER!
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| BLAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGG!!!!
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Doesn't set it off.

One thing I'm worried about is that you could have another form of identity theft with people stealing a person's log in PIN.

People have died.

Indeed, I just deleted a topic where someone was inquiring about suicide methods. 90% of the posts were egging the person on. That wouldn't be the first suicide on the site, probably won't be the last.

I was referring to the actual crimes, not the internet in general.

As in you follow them around the internet, hack their email, spread personal stuff around, put up naked pictures of them, etcetera etcetera.  The police won't do shit, if they file a report they might not even read it.  You could probably go and turn yourself in, explain your crimes in detail, and just get told to fuck off and stop wasting their time.  Now if they go and kill themselves, you're fucked.  Depraved indifference, the works, the entire contents of the book will be used to nail your ass to the wall.

Major incident, people pay attention, careers can be made or lost on the outcome.

While all of that is true, it's also not always in a buisiness's best interest to get the police involved. Case in point, a few years ago a 14 year old girl posted a nude picture of herself. She probably could have been charged witha crime, but as a minor she wouldn't get much. Of course, every person who viewed said picture committed a felony whether or not they knew her age. Even though the picture was not hosted by the site, we could have been held liable, or possibly charged criminally, for allowing a link to exist.

In that situation, the best thing for the site in general was to delete any topic containing said link, referring to said link, dropping clues as to how one might find said link on one's own, etc etc etc. I believe at one point even mentioning her username was enough to get a post deleted. This still pops up occasionally.

Of course, this wouldn't have been quite so bad if she had posted entirely anonymously. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the picture showed her face, and she was immediately recognized by users who knew her in real life. One of whom, of course, began posting her personal information. No law inforcement was ever involved (that I know of, anyway) because the site staff was able to handle it on their own. And the whole mess probably would have been avoided if she had known there would be personal concsquences to her for posting the picture in the first place.

You have some funny ideas on what constitutes a crime, a public posting of child pornography doesn't make everyone that walks past it guilty of possessing child pornography.  It must be intentional, along with other requirements depending on the state you live in, and the host would only be liable if they left it up after knowing it was a minor.

Covering up the crime on the other hand is problematic, you were legally required to report it most likely.

Probably couldn't have gotten anything done, but meh...

Agreed; that said the intent to violate the law is missing -- he was honestly trying to comply with the law, just didn't know the 'right' way to do so.  Ergo he does have a defense.  (Not a great one, but since the girl posted it herself it doesn't need to be all that 'heavyweight' a defense...)

!Note:  I'm not a laywer, that's my laymen's interpretation of the law speaking.!

Virtually nobody knows what the hell my nickname stands for, and I don't disclose it, but it's one I came up with and now use extensively. Those people with names like Unconquerable (heh) you know are gonna be retards, although he was a fantastic player. Anyone who knows me both in person and online agrees that I am a much better person online. Anonymity doesn't always make people a fuckwad.

Plus, I am curious as to how you enforce any law, at all, on the Internet. It is even used to spread child pornography, commit terrorism, incite to murder, harass. There are a LOT more serious things going on than trolling, and none of those are stopped. How would you prevent say a site hosted in international waters, on a space station, the Arctic or Antarctic, or any country that doesn't enforce this? The Pirate Bay shows how it can be done, and even sites like Isohunt which exist in developed nations such as Canada. Hell, they even sued the Canadian record industry. Win.

The proliferation of massive organized crime (and civil violations) on the Internet shows that the law of any nation cannot be imposed here.

I am fairly sure that although such a girl would be technically guilty, not even US courts would pass a significant sentence.

With cops and a judicial system, just like any other laws. You're giving the tech a bit too much credit. True, many areas where people want "enforcement" are technically challenging (and part of that "tech" is the legal context, including national and state boundaries). But even small cities like mine have local police whose beat is the nets. I don't even now what sorts of success rates the various net cop crews are claiming (and I wouldn't take them very seriously if I did), but there are people busted all the time for kiddie porn, copyright violations, etc.

Law in the phsyical world works the same way. Just because some folks get away with murder doesn't mean there's no enforcement, just that enforcement is inevitably imperfect.

If you think about it, I would say that very few (if any) of these forum trolls have the guts to do this face to face, where they would likely get punched out.

I don't think the article, or any of the articiles reference from that article, had anything to do with removing privacy.  Just anonymity.

The two are inextricably linked.