Online Anonymity: Painful and Priceless

Let's all ban anonymity on the internet! Hey, if I have to use my real name, so should...wait, what's that you say? I don't have to use my real name on the internet? Crap!

The idea of online anonymity has been taking a beating recently, in part because of such celebrated cases of fraud as the Gay Girl in Damascus blog, which turned out to have been written by a 40-year-old man in Scotland. Alicia Shepard, former ombudsman for National Public Radio, came out swinging in a piece for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University against the anonymity of commenters, which she calls "an exercise in faux democracy."

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