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Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan called the speech "strong, thoughtful and important" and noted that its rhetorical style subverted the soundbite-driven coverage of contemporary news media.[41]

Proposals to limit anonymous communications on the Internet would violate free speech rights long recognized by the Supreme Court. Anonymous and pseudonymous speech played a vital role in the founding of this country. Thomas Paine's Common Sensewas first released signed, "An Englishman." Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Samuel Adams, and others carried out the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists using pseudonyms. Today, human rights workers in China and many other countries have reforged the link between anonymity and free speech. Given the importance of anonymity as a component of free speech, the cost of banning anonymous Internet speech would be enormous. It makes no sense to treat Internet speech differently from printed leaflets or books.

Anonymous communication is seen as the cornerstone of an Internet culture that promotes sharing and free speech and is overtly anti-establishment. Anonymity, so the argument goes, ensures governments cannot spy on citizens and thus guarantees privacy and free speech. The recommendations of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's conference on "Anonymous Communication Policies for the Internet" [1] support this view. Among the findings were that "online anonymous communication is morally neutral" and that "it should be considered a strong human and constitutional right." This view is fundamentally mistaken; by allowing anonymous communication we actually risk an incremental breakdown of the fabric of our society. The price of our freedoms is not, I believe, anonymity, but accountability. Unless individuals and, more importantly, governments can be held accountable, we lose all recourse to the law and hence risk our very freedom. The following sections argue this in more detail and suggest the only real solution is more openness, not less.

The concept of anonymous originate in 90s. Japan was relatively late embracing IT. ISDN was just about to be introduced and the whole internet was largely of underground phenomenon especially in early 90s. Many information/data posted in internet involved hacking, warez, copyrighted material, pornography including child pornography, snuff, drugs, bombs, etc as well as no-hold-barred discussion which was also common sight in USENET in English Due to lax data protection law as well as the fact that most community generated site were owned by an individual, people were still reluctant to even create avatar account. More importantly, many of these site start as a secret retreat from the owner's real life, where s/he can be away from his job, his social standing, obligation, etc. Consequently, the owner of site often remained anonymous but with a designated nickname such as Kanrinin-san (Mr/Mrs Admin). Consequently, forum which requires registration never really took off in Japan. Later, these anonymous message board including USENET, which preceded it, came to be know collectively as "Nanashi Warudo" (The World of Anonymous, Nanashi=NoName=Anonymous), which in turn was mock of "Ayashii Warudo" "The World of Suspicious/Dubious". The armature anonymous message board had number limitation, most notably the limitation of server capacity. Due to higher cost of bandwidth in 90s, dominant form of community site was text based and did not allow transfer of image. Secondly, only form fund to run the site was from the owner's day job and meagre earning from (often pornographic) banner ad. Moreover, free and open nature of anonymous nature of the posting made any community message board prone to sudden increase in traffic which result in frequent shut down of any popular message board. Moreover, the simple queing of thread in the board made it difficult to find a target thread among the crowd of thread in the board. These restriction limited the appeal of the message board to te

Should anonymity be protected in electronic interactions and communications? Would this be a good thing for community, responsibility, free expression, political participation, and personal fulfillment? If so, when and why? These key normative questions probe the value of anonymity in our computerized society and political order. In this brief discussion, I will not directly address these important questions but will address questions that undergird them about the meaning of anonymity in a contemporary, computerized society, including: What is anonymity? And, what are we seeking to protect when we propose to protect it? Although answers to these foundational questions will not immediately yield answers to the key normative questions mentioned above, they are essential to understanding what is at stake in the answers to these questions. For, after all is said and done, we would not want to discover that the thing we have fought so hard to protect was not worth protecting after all.

Anonymity for everyone via phone.

DramaTel. A real product for keeping "yo'self" anonymous whilst attempting to catch "playas" or to be a "playa".

Judge wants to pursue libel case against anonymous posters after they bombard the story with 25,000+ comments - many of which vulgar and defamitory

How newspaper websites are going away from allowing anonymous posters on their sites