Pooling Intellectual Capital: Thoughts on Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and Limited Liability in Cyberspace
![handle is hein.journals/uchclf1996 and id is 143 raw text is: Pooling Intellectual Capital:
Thoughts on Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and
Limited Liability in Cyberspace
David G. Postt
Crime on the Internet also presents the critical issue of
anonymity .... The development of secure, anonymous
electronic mail will greatly impair the ability of law en-
forcement to track terrorist communications. For exam-
ple, one Internet posting regarding the Oklahoma City
bombing and bomb construction was sent through an
anonymous remailer-a device designed to forward
electronic mail so that the original sender is un-
known-probably to prevent tracing.... Although prior
communication methods permit anonymous communica-
tions, those services generally provide one-to-one com-
munications. It would be both time-consuming and
costly to use either the phone or mail systems to dis-
seminate information wholesale, [which] effectively
prevent[s] wide-scale malicious use and limit[s] the
harm that can be caused. On the Internet, by contrast,
there are no monetary or technical impediments to
worldwide dissemination of communications. Anony-
mous, worldwide dissemination of terrorist information
must be of paramount concern to law enforcement and
to ordinary citizens.'
t Visiting Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, and Co-di-
rector, Cyberspace Law Institute. E-mail: Postd@law.georgetown.edu or david.post
@counsel.com. My thanks to David Johnson, Mark Lemley, Michael Froomkin, and the
pseudonymously named Perry the Cynic, for comments on earlier formulations of the
ideas presented here, as well as to the participants on the Cyberia-L listserv generally for
their contributions to my thinking on these questions. As is customary, I bear all respon-
sibility for the manner in which those ideas are expressed.
Hearings on Mayhem Manuals and the Internet before the Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Technology and Government Information of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
1995 WL 293484 (FDCH) (May 11, 1995) (Testimony of Robert S. Litt, Deputy Assistant
Attorney General, Department of Justice, Criminal Division).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/uchclf1996&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Pooling Intellectual Capital: Thoughts on Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and Limited Liability in Cyberspace
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