A little while back I contributed a decent post to DovBear that generated an impressive response from legions of commenters on DovBear. The post was a comparison of anonymous vs. onymous blogging.
I argued that by blogging about important things anonymously, they are less effective and only perpetuate the near censorship of right-wing Orthodox Judaism. Some went on to call anonymous blogging cowardly.
In the discussion that ensued I conceded that quite possibly, better conversation can be had anonymously and I admitted that for a blog like DovBear, the unfortunate reality is that anonymity is the preferable choice.
Something left undiscussed was the reality that DovBear is not anonymous. Google, who hosts his blog, knows exactly who he is, where he lives and presumably, has access to all his email, searches and web history. Until a few days ago, one may have assumed that their information was safe with Google.
Not anymore.
A New York State Supreme Court ruled that Google was compelled to reveal the identity of a blogger using Google’s Blogger software. The blogger is question had posted defamatory comments about a fashion model that negatively affected her career. The model sued Google to uncloak the anonymous blogger and the court held that Google must comply.
Some may think I herald this as a victory for onymous blogging. Not so. If one is not comfortable blogging onymously his privacy must be respected. I urge people to choose to blog onymously, I am not on favor of mandating it and banning anonymous blogging.
The Bray of Fundie has an interesting post about his opinion on the ramifications of this ruling which is worth reading. Click here to go to to his excellent blog called HaMavdil.
(This is just one more reason to self host one’s blog. Technically the owner of a Blogger blog is Google and it is their information to share or withhold. A self hosted blog cannot be “outed” by Google as the blog owner is the rights holder to the information on the blog.)
But what of the courts decision? How does this affect the blogosphere? Some are calling it the “end of anonymous blogging”. That may very well be the case, but a new anonymous medium (twitter?) will crop up and still give voice to the anony-addicts out there. So really, the voice of the anonymous will not be quelled it will just need to move its home base.
The prospect of Google sharing our information is more worrisome than anything else. Everything we do is being recorded by Google. That can seem very scary.
Yet, when we reflect on this idea we can ask ourselves, is it so strange to us that our lives are being recorded by Google? Is it such a foreign concept that our every movement has meaning and does not disappear into the oblivion of infinite time and space?
Of course it is not. Our Rabbis teach us “V’chol ma’asecha b’sefer nichtavim”. All our actions are recorded in a “book”. Obviously, this cannot be a real, leather-bound volume published by Harper-Collins. I understsand this to mean that each of our actions has cosmic ramifications. Whenever we act, it affects us and the world is affected. None of our actions are meaningless that they would go “unrecorded”.
This is what Elul and the High Holidays are about. Realizing that our decisions and choices make real differences and hopefully adjusting our lives accordingly to make good and true choices.
The court decision in favor of the fashion model comes at a great time. We can take stock and learn a lesson about what it means for our lives to “recorded”; what it means to live life with the understanding that everything we do matters.
At some point we all will need to face our life’s choices. Let’s make the right choices.
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