No Name, No City,

Thanks for mentioning the very points I was trying to make when I initiated this thread.

The point of this thread, for those who were wondering, was to offer, from a GUEST user's perspective, some legitmate reasons why people have concerns about using email accounts as website log-ins. My apologies for not being more articulate.

There is a strong, mainstream point of view that anonymous Internet posting should be banned. I pointed to two cases, both involving government actions, where the intent was for governments to ban anonymous posting: one in France, one in the US.

I realize that many Mudcatters are opposed to anonymous posting in all circumstances, or extremely limited circumstances (which they have failed to spell out, I might add). Therefore, I would presume this is the position being most stridently and vocally defended here.

I just wanted to point out, in the contributions I was trying to make here, that banning anonymous posting in newsgroups, discussion forums, and chat rooms is being opposed internationally in courts, in government legislatures, and in the court of public opinion by free speech advocates.

I support the positions of free speech advocates. I believe that the "personal accountability" issue is a smokescreen, which, if legislation is enacted, will result in widespread violations of right to privacy laws outside of the Internet, and to widespread abuse by governments with strong interests in carrying on with secret campaigns against citizens expressing dissenting points of view.

We've seen the violations of rights to privacy and free speech in the US in the very recent past: anti-dissident campaigns against communist, labor, civil rights, gay rights, environmental, human rights, and other left leaning movements by the FBI and CIA. Anyone who believes this *is* somehow a thing of the past, and something the US government no longer in engaged is, I think, sadly mistaken.

Especially because of the historic relationship between the US and British folk revival movements with many of the movements targeted for goverment surveillance of their members I mentioned above, I believe anonymity is extremely important for anyone who wishes to express views freely in any folk music Internet forum.

Others may disagree. I note that the membership of this forum appears to be pretty conservative poltically, despite rhetoric of progressive attitudes being regularly expressed by many members.

But they shouldn't be defacto silencing the debate by burying it under a bunch of meaningless diatribes over "cowardice" among guests and "hurt feelings" of the Mudcat "clique". That ends up demeaning the importance of the issue of anonymity, rights to privacy, and free speech.

Again, thanks to those posters who did comment on the issues raised intitially in this thread, and attempts to keep it focused on the topic, rather than on individuals posting about it.

All