QUOTE(the fieryangel @ Thu 19th February 2009, 6:07am) 
I'd like to suggest that this article about the concept of "cyber civil rights" should be part of this discussion.
Here are some excerpts...
QUOTE(Cyber Civil Rights @ Boston University Law Review)
Cyber Civil Rights
Social networking sites and blogs have increasingly become breeding grounds for anonymous online groups that attack women, people of color, and members of other traditionally disadvantaged classes. These destructive groups target individuals with defamation, threats of violence, and technology-based attacks that silence victims and concomitantly destroy their privacy. Victims go offline or assume pseudonyms to prevent future attacks, impoverishing online dialogue and depriving victims of the social and economic opportunities associated with a vibrant online presence. Attackers manipulate search engines to reproduce their lies and threats for employers and clients to see, creating digital “scarlet letters†that ruin reputations.
Today’s cyber-attack groups update a history of anonymous mobs coming together to victimize and subjugate vulnerable people. The social science literature identifies conditions that magnify dangerous group behavior and those that tend to defuse it. Unfortunately, Web 2.0 technologies accelerate mob behavior.
New technologies generate economic progress by reducing the costs of socially productive activities. Unfortunately, those same technologies often reduce the costs of socially destructive activities.
Technology minimizes the costs of pro- and anti-social behavior through two opposing types of changes. Technology disaggregates. Communication advances allow people to separate their ideas from their physical presence. This is equally true for the scientist, the venture capitalist, and the criminal.
An anti-social behavior that commonly results from technological and economic progress is civil rights abuse.
The Internet raises important civil rights issues through both its aggregative and disaggregative qualities. Online, bigots can aggregate their efforts even when they have insufficient numbers in any one location to form a conventional hate group. They can disaggregate their offline identities from their online presence, escaping social opprobrium and legal liability for destructive acts.
On social networking sites, blogs, and other Web 2.0 platforms, destructive groups publish lies and doctored photographs of vulnerable individuals.
They send damaging statements about victims to employers and manipulate search engines to highlight those statements for business associates and clients to see. They flood websites with violent sexual pictures and shut down blogs with denial-of- service attacks. These assaults terrorize victims, destroy reputations, corrode privacy, and impair victims’ ability to participate in online and offline society as equals.
Some victims respond by shutting down their blogs and going offline. Others write under pseudonyms to conceal their gender, a reminder of nineteenth-century women writers George Sand and George Eliot. Victims who stop blogging or writing under their own names lose the chance to build robust online reputations that could generate online and offline career opportunities.
Social networking sites and blogs have increasingly become breeding grounds for anonymous online groups that attack women, people of color, and members of other traditionally disadvantaged classes. These destructive groups target individuals with defamation, threats of violence, and technology-based attacks that silence victims and concomitantly destroy their privacy. Victims go offline or assume pseudonyms to prevent future attacks, impoverishing online dialogue and depriving victims of the social and economic opportunities associated with a vibrant online presence. Attackers manipulate search engines to reproduce their lies and threats for employers and clients to see, creating digital “scarlet letters†that ruin reputations.
Today’s cyber-attack groups update a history of anonymous mobs coming together to victimize and subjugate vulnerable people. The social science literature identifies conditions that magnify dangerous group behavior and those that tend to defuse it. Unfortunately, Web 2.0 technologies accelerate mob behavior.
New technologies generate economic progress by reducing the costs of socially productive activities. Unfortunately, those same technologies often reduce the costs of socially destructive activities.
Technology minimizes the costs of pro- and anti-social behavior through two opposing types of changes. Technology disaggregates. Communication advances allow people to separate their ideas from their physical presence. This is equally true for the scientist, the venture capitalist, and the criminal.
An anti-social behavior that commonly results from technological and economic progress is civil rights abuse.
The Internet raises important civil rights issues through both its aggregative and disaggregative qualities. Online, bigots can aggregate their efforts even when they have insufficient numbers in any one location to form a conventional hate group. They can disaggregate their offline identities from their online presence, escaping social opprobrium and legal liability for destructive acts.
On social networking sites, blogs, and other Web 2.0 platforms, destructive groups publish lies and doctored photographs of vulnerable individuals.
They send damaging statements about victims to employers and manipulate search engines to highlight those statements for business associates and clients to see. They flood websites with violent sexual pictures and shut down blogs with denial-of- service attacks. These assaults terrorize victims, destroy reputations, corrode privacy, and impair victims’ ability to participate in online and offline society as equals.
Some victims respond by shutting down their blogs and going offline. Others write under pseudonyms to conceal their gender, a reminder of nineteenth-century women writers George Sand and George Eliot. Victims who stop blogging or writing under their own names lose the chance to build robust online reputations that could generate online and offline career opportunities.
Let's discuss.
