Why is there a greater level of protection afforded to intellectual property than personal identity?

Does the Communications Decency Act of 1996 still fit the Internet of 2009?

If Congress enacted regulatory measures to protect individuals from anonymous slander online, is there a significant risk of chilling free speech?

One of the critical questions regarding the future of the Internet is how to strike a balance between the desire for anonymous discussion and the need for accountability for defamation and illegal actions. It’s a tricky subject, with intelligent arguments on all sides. Recently, Stefanie Haeffele-Balch pondered this issue in a well-written post for Surprisingly Free, the blog of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

In her post, Haeffele-Balch references an NPR segment from earlier this year featuring Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik and Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In the segment, Opsahl says that the Communications Decency Act does not need to be changed, arguing that readers know how to look at salacious material in context. Unfortunately, determining the context of content online is rarely achieved through a Google search alone.

While web experts can analyze search results with a higher degree of discretion, the majority of Internet users do not have the time, inclination, or knowledge of the web needed to know, at a glance, the difference between 4Chan and Digg. Given that, imagine then how difficult would be for an average web surfer to sort through the credibility of individual bloggers. The truth is, for most people, a single Google search is all it takes to form a judgment against someone.

Despite our differing opinions with Mr. Opsahl, however, he is right when he says that it is “better to have a lot of different voices…than have the law or the courts decide which voices can come forward.” Heavy-handed government regulation of online speech would be too unwieldy for a medium that evolves as quickly as the Internet. However, that doesn’t mean that making an intelligent and considered regulatory change will lead us into the pages of George Orwell’s 1984. As Michael Fertik says at the end of the segment, “It’s not like the alternative to the status quo is totalitarianism. It’s not true. It’s false. It’s wrong. There are one hundred steps between where we are today and a scenario in which we really chill speech.”

To listen to the entire segment, use the media player below. You can also follow this link to read the full transcript online.