I am very much a believer in anonymity on the internet, but I was wondering today - particularly after reading the terrorism topic - when it would be considered fair game to reveal somebody's identity.

As a "normal" (going by the fact that I don't have anything that society deems a 'mental illness', such as pedophilia) person, I think that it's when people are being harmed directly by somebody's actions that their identity needs to be revealed upon questioning by the appropriate authorities.

For instance, I don't think pedophiles should be "unmasked" but those who rape children should.
I don't think those who hate the U.S. should be "unmasked" but those who have very clearly hinted that they're behind any attacks that kill the innocent - terrorism - should have their identities revealed.

What are your views on privacy and anonymity? If you were Sysop, where would you draw the line on keeping your users anonymous? Would there even be a line?

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when laws have been broken?

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When did Bush start wearing a mask?

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Anonymous users should never be unmasked. Anonymity is a critical part of free speech, and it has to be universal or not practiced at all. You afford the same protection to everybody or to nobody. Furthermore, your criteria for unmasking anonymous users is hard to ascertain.

I just raped a child.
I just killed a man.
I just stole candy from a baby.

Are any of these things true? How do you know? Should I be unmasked anyway, just as a precaution? Or should the be a more concrete "probable cause"? Who decides what's a probable cause? It's all too hazy to determine, and many people on the Internet are just lying.

In addition, once you start unmasking some people, it'll start a slippery slope to end of anonymity. It starts out with people who definitely did something. Then people who are thinking about doing something. Then people who admit to having thought about doing something, and it goes from there.

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everyone deserves rights like free speech, anonymity or whatever, and freedom to do as they please

UPON CONDITION they don't cause unnecessary harm to others. once they do, they start jeopardizing their rights because they impeded someone else's.

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I believe anonymity should be preserved as well as technically possible, as both a contributor to the Freenet project and also having hosted an anonymous message board on the internet that didn't keep logs of users IP addresses.
I acknowledge there are people who can't handle anonymity on both sides (both readers and submitters)
but I feel that the positives far outweigh the negatives.
The Freenet project took a clear view on this, it's better to have unmoderated free speech than to have any censorship at all. The downside of it is it has brought paedophiles onto the network. The upside is that individual views cannot be suppressed on the network. If there was a technical possibility for censorship, who should be the censor? I can't trust anybody to be the censor, not myself and definitely not the government. I don't like the paedos but I don't like censorship either.
Uncensored freedom of speech is one of the cornerstones of democracy.
What people need to learn nowadays is to accept the views and opinions of others, they don't need to agree with anybody but they need to acknowledge their view.
There are plenty of people I don't agree with but I acknowledge their right to their opinion, even if I think they are an idiot, I'm entitled to my opinion that they are idiots and they are entitled to their opinion that hurf a durf durf and the internet is the antichrist.

What troubles me is efforts of several governments around the globe to suppress free speech on the internet. They usually use terrorists or child pornographers to justify huge expensive systems that make internet infrastructure more complex and less reliablea and anyone with even the slightest idea about internetworking has no problem avoiding these filters.
At least the Chinese government is honest about the real purpose of their filtering system, which serves the same purpose as every other government organized censorship system, to suppress every opinion that disagrees with the government. The chances that the "child porn filters" will be used exclusively to filter child porn are about as slim as the chances that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the earth. Once the censorship infrastructure is in place there is nothing to stop the government from censoring every single thing they or their friends disagree with.

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I believe that people should have the freedom to say what they like free from fear of reprisal. You should be able to anonymously talk about the things you have done or want to do or believe in with others. In many cases, it might help people to see things from a different light.

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I suppose there is a line to be drawn on some moral grounds. But, in a place of anonymity, is there really such a thing as morality? I just don't think it comes with the package.

Of course, it's entirely possible that any and all posts and threads that may conflict with Sysop's views may result in a ban - or worse. But we've got to understand that this Sysop fellow created this site for the former reason - to create a near-complete anonymous atmosphere in which anyone can say anything that is everything, even if that includes leaked plans about an invasion in the works.

But as far as that goes, that kind of responsibility - to find out such happenings here on the internet - more or less lies with the peeping toms of all the governments present, not us simple citizens. Yes, we should do what we can, but it's not our day job, you know?

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I only unmasked anon once, the MSN-adress of a girl I know got posted on Retardchan and i told her that someone probably wants to take Revenge on her, all fine i guess ^^

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