Trilight Zone

[digital8]

When communicating with others over the Internet, it is frequently preferred to not use any sort of identifiable handle (such as a "user name" or other arbitrary way of identifying who is speaking). The most popular worldwide example of this is within the Japanese forum 2channel. The forum prides itself on the total anonymity of those who post to the channel. The administrators of 2channel see the anonymous posting as a real benefit to those who post to the forum, because it is the argument, not the credibility of the author, that is being debated. This is in stark contrast to other Internet forums, such as Slashdot. In Slashdot-style forums, the ability to post anonymously is available, but other users of the forum tend to hold the content of the post in a lower regard than they would if the same post was sent by a user with a registered username. The Slashdot forum encourages this tendency by attributing posts like this to "Anonymous Coward," implicating that the poster lacks the courage to stand by his or her statement.

There have been numerous ways for Internet users to maintain their anonymity on the network. One of the most popular in the 1990's was the Penet remailer, which served users of e-mail and Usenet from 1993 to 1996. It was ultimately shut down by its administrator when he felt he could no longer reliably protect the anonymity of the remailer's users from legal challenges, proven when the Church of Scientology successfully sued him to reveal the identity of a user of the service. Since then, the development of Nym servers has emerged, in which no one - not even the operator of the service - can determine the identity of a user. This has been countered with advances in text analysis, in which the identity of a writer is determined by comparing the writing style of a piece to styles of pieces in which the author is known. It appears that the struggle between those that wish to remain anonymous and those seeking to reveal them will continue on the Internet indefinitely.