"Today, when cowardly anonymity is souring Internet discourse, it really is hard to understand how anonymous speech is vital to a free society." Huh??

Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, begins with "Faceless Internet sadists who ruin reputations don't deserve full free-speech protection" in this LA Times op-ed (see a compelling case in our own world) ... but then concludes along a bewilderingly different axis that anonymous speech is somehow no longer vital to a free society. Surely addressing the issue of defamation in the online world doesn't have to be synonymous with tainting the value of all anonymous speech?

Tags: Anonymity, Free speech