One debate begets another. Jonathon Adler at Volokh does the best job of explaining the source:
Over the past two months, Ed Whelan (with whom I blog on NRO’s “Bench Memos”) and a pseudonymous blogger at Obsidian Wings known as “publius,” have traded barbs and insults while debating various issues related to President Obama’s nominations of Harold Koh and Sonia Sotomayor.
Over time, the heat-to-light ratio in the Whelan-publius exchanges increased, and Whelan learned publius’ real identity – a recently minted, untenured law professor. As part of a recent response to publius, Whelan decided to disclose this information in a blog post.
While Adler’s views are decidedly colored by his sympathies (as well as his personal history as an anonymous blogger, Juan Non-Volokh), the set-up portrays the problem of getting into a pissing match when hiding inside a glass house.
It’s long been my view that, in the absence of certain particularly well-justified reasons, anonymous blogging and commenting are for cowards. How easy it is to throw stones when you bear no responsibility for who or what they strike. I’m not against stone-throwing per se, when there is a need for strong words and purpose for taking a strong position, but doing so when there are no consequences to be suffered.
But this isn’t a debate about whether one should post online under a pseudonym. Rather, this is a debate over whether one should “out” one’s pseudonymous adversary, an entirely different issue.
At Point of Law, Walter Olson and Michael Krauss have expressed two very different views. First came Krauss’ view :
It’s long been my view that, in the absence of certain particularly well-justified reasons, anonymous blogging and commenting are for cowards. How easy it is to throw stones when you bear no responsibility for who or what they strike. I’m not against stone-throwing per se, when there is a need for strong words and purpose for taking a strong position, but doing so when there are no consequences to be suffered.
But this isn’t a debate about whether one should post online under a pseudonym. Rather, this is a debate over whether one should “out” one’s pseudonymous adversary, an entirely different issue.
At Point of Law, Walter Olson and Michael Krauss have expressed two very different views. First came Krauss’ view :
Incredibly, [South Texas School of Law Professor John] Blevins [formerly known as Publius] has defended his anonymous sniping as ethical: he didn’t want to get in trouble with his law school, he didn’t want to embarrass his family, he didn’t want to offend his students. What Blevins didn’t want to do, sez me, is take responsibility for his opinions. When you attack someone by name, you name yourself — we are not in revolutionary times where the original Publius could go appropriately unnamed.
Krauss, incidently, strongly supports Whelan’s views and disagrees vehemently with Blevins’. But compare Krauss’ co-blogger, Walter Olson, who shares Krauss’ substantive views that Whelan was right and Blevins wrong, but:
I understand why “hiding behind a pseudonym while sniping at a critic who is out in the open”, in Michael’s words, will often provoke wrath, as it provoked Whelan’s. But I can’t go along with the seeming implication that 1) only those of us willing to attach real names to our opinions should consider participating in online controversy; 2) publicly outing hitherto anonymous commentators is the deserved response to their hopes of anonymity;And more particularly to the punishment Whelan exacted on Bevins:
Wishing that certain personalities would publicly identify themselves, tweaking them publicly for not doing so, or vowing to ignore them until they do, are quite different from triumphantly announcing their secret in public, thus inflicting on them the train of personal consequences they had sought to avoid.Michael Krauss, in what he describes as his “brief and only response,” states :
This may be one of those areas where libertarians and conservatives disagree. For the former, no fraud or coercion is involved in anonymous blogging and that’s that. [An anonymous blog posting is not necessarily itself a lie, even if the anonymity is motivated by a desire to misrepresent oneself to third parties.] For the latter, arguments are illegitimately launched when they are launched from behind a hood, as it were, unless there is a force majeure involved. We have the moral (not legal — I’m making no argument here about legislating any of this) right to confront our virtual accusers when they confront us, I think. Ed Whelan was deprived of that right until someone (who? I have no idea, but that would be an interesting story) had enough and removed Blevins’ hood.Frankly, my sympathies lie far closer to Krauss. There is something seriously amiss with the person hiding behind a closed door while hurling insults. It’s exacerbated when they lay claim to personal knowledge or insight to support their arguments, but which can’t be known or tested because of their veil of secrecy. It smells bad. It smells disingenuous. It smells like a lie.
Yet, revealing the identity of someone who, whether we agree or not, has decided to conceal his true identity is not merely to discount the pseudonymous bloggers claims, but to do him harm. Whether we see the harm as great or trivial is immaterial; it’s not our life and we don’t get a vote in another person’s choices, a point missed with great frequency in the blawgosphere.
Was it Whelan’s right to punish Blevins by disclosing his identity? Absolutely not. He was entitled to ignore him, to ridicule him, to discount him and to attack his credibility as a person who lacked the fortitude of putting his name to his positions. But not to punish him.
The unfairness toward Whelan of having a faceless, nameless accuser was beyond question. But illegitimate arguments from anonymous attackers are legion on the internet, and there are way to deal with them (often to their dismay and disappointment, given their demands to be taken seriously). Outing them is not the way. Outing them goes a step too far. They deserve to bear the risk of public ridicule, but not the risk of outing. Whelan was wrong to do so.
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Yup.
I’m not, obviously, in a situation where I have to consider the implications of expressing sometimes unpopular opinions on my ability to support myself and my family; I’m not sure that that’s the case for you, but that is the way to bet. (“Hey, Lefty — I was thinking about hiring that Greenfield guy, but — ” “Nah. Don’t. He don’t show no respect for authority. You wants a lawyer what don’t make waves.”)
That’s not the case for a lot of folks. Maybe they should just man up, speak their minds, and take the social consequences — insert quick plug for http://www.indoctrinate-u.com ; I saw it with my lovely liberal wife, who thought it was great, too — or maybe not.
But maybe it should be their call.
That said, I think there can be a legitimate time and place for outing an anonymous creep — this, IMHO, and all, wasn’t it.
Anonymous blogging: a second view
For the record, let me say my views on the Ed Whelan/”Publius”/John Blevins affair differ widely from those of my valued co-blogger Michael Krauss. I understand why “hiding behind a pseudonym while sniping at a critic who is out in…
There are situations where I would happily “out” an anonymous blogger/commenter, where I knew there to be active and deliberate deception, such as with shills or sockpuppets. But that’s an intentional abuse of anonymity for the purpose of attacking someone or some idea in an attempt to present himself as legitimate when he’s a not. This just happened here yesterday, and the scoundrel was treated like the lying sack of excrement he was.
I would never favor outing sock puppets. When they’re good and ready, emotionally able to deal with who they are, in an honest relationship with their friends and families, proud to be an argyle or tube, then the sock puppets can and probably should out themselves. But to do so before they’re at that point in their lives is just wrong.
Lamb Chop was a huge influence on me as a child, making me very sensitive to the difficulties sock puppets face in life.
I was always suspect of Lamb Chop. And that Shari person too.
The previous comments speak to the ethical and moral issues involved in outing an anonymous blogger and therefore speak to anonymous blogging. I suggest both sides consider the history of the U.S. and anonymous pamphleteers and authors. There are several examples which are available such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and Thomas Paine. As a side note, the first three of those used the pseudonym “Publius” in publishing the Federalist Papers.
I think everybody around here is pretty well aware of that, Henry. Lawyers, for the most part, have a working knowledge of history.