The political blogosphere is in uproar about the remarks of two CNN anchors about the ban of anonymous blogging. Just after President Obama denounced the new media, those two discuss on live television the possibility of a crackdown on blogging.

They are concerned with the use of blogs to spread lies about persons and therefore they have to be legally shut down.

First of all, there is no such thing as anonymous blogging. Everyone can sue the internet provider in order to get a name and an address of the person, who posted this, just with the IP address. Furthermore many people who have their own blog probably have registered their homepage and so everyone can see who the person is without any hassle.

But the one thing, which struck me most, was John Roberts’ call for the courage to talk to somebody’s face instead of blog about them. But think about this, as far as I know you can cover your face in order to protect your identity. And you can still exercise your 1st Amendment rights.
Isn’t this pretty much the same as anonymous blogging?
As I mentioned above, nobody is anonymous on the Internet and therefore every step taken towards deprive them from their 1st Amendment rights would be exactly the same as losing them in real life.

So why crack down on anonymous bloggers on the Internet if you can do practically the same thing in real life? Nobody would prevent a person with a mask from giving a speech, because once he breaks the law they can take off his mask and see who he is.