Cheers, tears, and fears

YouTube video by Reborious — SpongeBob sings “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”

This post is to test embedded video, and it admittedly has no thematic relevance here–well, almost none, anyway. I was just reading about Kentucky state congressman Tim Couch, who wants to criminalize anonymous posting on the Internet. No, he’s not the former inept quarterback of the Cleveland Browns, but like the 1999 NFL #1 draft pick he is apparently prone to dropping the ball.

You wanna be where you can see our troubles are all the same. You wanna be where everybody knows your name.

Representative Couch just wants to protect poor kids from being harassed and tormented by Internet “bullies,” so he says, and he notes that there have been several such instances of virtual bullying in his district. So here we have another roadway to Hell paved with good intentions.

Mr. Couch’s dumb idea is not novel, of course. Similar calls for banning the electronic use of pseudonyms, handles, and monikers are made from time to time in numerous forums, but to my knowledge this is the first such attempt to legislate Internet transparency. In a classic understatement, Couch acknowledged that enforcing the law’s provisions requiring online posting under one’s real name and address–with accompanying graduated fines for repeated violations–would prove a significant “challenge.”

Be that as it may, the real challenge will be dealing with the real carnage that will ensue in the real world when well-intentioned but misguided nut balls like Couch finally get their way. My guess is they haven’t seen enough of cyberspace, or they’d know better than to think, even for a moment, that we should endeavor to make it more like the real world. And thank God the Internet for now is what it is, because in one respect what’s wonderful about virtual reality is precisely that it’s not real. After all, no blood runs in cyberspace, and the longer we can forestall the various virtual battlefields from expanding into our streets the better. And we haven’t got long. Already there’s no such thing as Internet anonymity, or hasn’t Mr. Couch heard? He must not watch 24 on Fox.

But for now, such precarious and inadequate protection from predators as we can get–simply by not voluntarily disclosing our personal identities to every crook, psychopath, pedophile, terrorist, and serial killer extant–is to be momentarily savored and appreciated, because neither the physical world nor the virtual world is one where you want everybody to know your name.