One of the most controversial international legal acts on this subject is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). In February 2015, the treaty was signed by 31 states as well as the European Union – but not all ratified. Japan became the first country to ratify the treaty on October 4, 2012. It establishes an international regime for the imposition of civil and criminal penalties for Internet infringement and copyright infringement. While ACTA is intentionally vague and leaves it up to signatories to set precise rules themselves, critics could mean that innocent travelers have their laptops searched for unlicensed music or jailed for carrying a generic drug. Violators could be held liable for the total loss of potential sales (meaning that anyone who buys a counterfeit product would have bought the original). It applies to the unintentional use of copyrighted material. It requires website owners to ensure that they comply with the laws of several jurisdictions. Despite criticism from the EU, it was negotiated secretly and outside of established international trade bodies. [46] Anonymous charity has long been a widespread and enduring moral imperative of many ethical and religious systems and, in practice, a widespread human activity. A beneficiary may not want to establish a relationship with the beneficiary, especially if the beneficiary is perceived as unappetizing. [8] [Citation needed] Benefactors may not want to identify themselves as capable of giving. A benefactor may want to make the world a better place as long as no one knows who did it, out of modesty to avoid the public.
[9] Another reason for anonymous charity is a benefactor who doesn`t want a nonprofit to persecute them for more donations, sometimes aggressively. Anonymity is perceived by many as a right, especially anonymity in communication on the Internet. The partial right to anonymity is legally protected to varying degrees in different jurisdictions. Unnamed; I want a name or a name. A publication that does not disclose the author`s name must be anonymous. Cases are sometimes reported anonymously, for example, without mentioning the names of the parties. Abbreviated as “Anon”. There are two aspects, first, giving to a large non-profit organization obscures the recipient of a gift from the benefactor, the other is anonymous to disguise the benefactor both from the recipient and from everyone else. There are many reasons why this is done. Anonymity is directly related to the concept of obscurantism or pseudonym, in which an artist or group tries to remain anonymous for various reasons that are not limited to this: adding a mystical element to himself or his work, trying to avoid what is called a “cult of personality” or hero worship, when charisma, beauty, wealth or other unrelated or slightly related aspects of the person(s) are the main reason for the interest in their work and not in the work itself; also the ability to invade an area or area of interest that is usually dominated by men, such as James Tiptree, Jr., the famous science fiction author who was actually a woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon, as seems to be the case with JT LeRoy. Anonymity can also be used as protection against prosecution.
For example, many criminals try to avoid identification during illegal acts by covering/covering their face with scarves or masks, and wear gloves or other hand coverings so as not to leave fingerprints. In organized crime, criminal groups may collaborate on a particular project without revealing their name or other personally identifiable information to each other. The film The Thomas Crown Affair featured a fictional collaboration of people who had never met before and didn`t know who had recruited them. The anonymous purchase of a weapon or knife intended for use in a crime prevents an abandoned weapon from being associated with the identity of the perpetrator. In art history, many painting workshops can be identified and discussed by their characteristic style, and the result of the workshop can be determined in chronological order. Sometimes archival research later identifies the name when the “Master of Flémalle” – defined by three paintings at the Städel Art Institute in Frankfurt – was identified as Robert Campin. The 20th century art historian, Bernard Berenson, methodically identified many Florentine and Sienese workshops of the early Renaissance under epithets such as “Amico di Sandro” for an anonymous painter in the immediate circle of Sandro Botticelli. David Chaum is called the godfather of anonymity and he aspires to be one of the great visionaries of contemporary science. In the early 1980s, while a computer scientist at Berkeley, Chaum predicted the world where computer networks would make mass surveillance possible. As Dr.
Joss Wright explains, “David Chaum was way ahead of his time. He predicted in the early 1980s worries that would occur on the Internet 15 or 20 years later. [20] However, some people see anonymity on the Internet as a threat to our society as a whole. David Davenport, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, believes that allowing anonymous communications over the network endangers the fabric of our society. [21] “Accountability requires that those responsible for any wrongdoing be identified and brought to justice. However, if people remain anonymous, by definition, they cannot be identified, making it impossible to hold them accountable,” he says. Suppose that only Alice, Bob and Carol have the keys to a bank safe and one day the contents of the safe are lost (lock not broken). Without additional information, we can`t know for sure if it was Alice, Bob or Carol who emptied the safe.
Specifically, any element in {Alice, Bob, Carol} could be the culprit with a probability of 1. However, as long as none of them have been convicted with 100% certainty, we must assume that the author remains anonymous and that the attribution of the probability of 1 to one of the players must remain undecided. Another wrinkle: Be aware that a plaintiff may try to disguise a defamation claim as a claim of copyright infringement in order to use softer standards to reveal your identity. If you are being sued for copyright infringement but believe that the dispute is really about your criticism of the plaintiff, you should bring this to the attention of your attorney and/or court. In re Subpoena Issued According to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to: 43SB.com, 2007 WL 4335441 (D. Idaho 2007), provides a good example of a plaintiff trying to use copyright law to circumvent First Amendment protections for anonymous speech. With few perceived negative consequences, anonymous or semi-anonymous forums often provide a soap box for disruptive conversational behaviors. The term “troll” is sometimes used to refer to those who engage in such disruptive behavior. Keep in mind that the cases discussed on this page are cases of defamation and other lawsuits in which speech has played a crucial role. Most copyright infringement lawsuits, especially those related to peer-to-peer file sharing, fall into a completely different category, even though they sometimes involve anonymous actors. According to an important case in this area, Sony Music Entertainment v. Does 1-40, 326 F.Supp.2d 556 (S.D.N.Y.
2004), peer-to-peer file sharing “is considered a language, but only to a certain extent.” In copyright cases, therefore, courts tend to impose relatively light standards on plaintiffs before allowing the discovery of the identity of an anonymous defendant. In addition, it is generally relatively easy for an applicant in a copyright case to provide basic evidence in support of their claim. So if you`re involved in a copyright infringement case, you shouldn`t assume that the First Amendment protects our identity, even if you`re in a state that applies a high burden in defamation cases. With the exception of highly sensitive national security issues and juvenile justice proceedings, courtrooms in the United States are open to the public. In addition to attending hearings and hearings, all court records are equally accessible to all. This is justified by the fact that public access to all aspects of judicial proceedings promotes transparency and leads to greater public confidence in the judicial system. According to this interpretation, are there circumstances in which a party to the process may conduct a case anonymously or under a pseudonym? If it is necessary to refer to someone who is anonymous, it is usually necessary to create some kind of pseudo-identification for that person. In the literature, the most common way to claim that an author`s identity is unknown is simply to call it “anonymous.” This is usually the case for older texts in which the author has been dead for a long time and is not able to claim authorship of a work. When the work claims to be that of a famous author, the pseudonymous author is identified as “pseudo-“, as in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an author who claims – and has long been believed – to be Dionysius the Areopagite, a primitive Christian convert. While anonymity on the internet can provide a harmful environment where people can hurt others, anonymity can provide a much safer and more relaxed internet experience. In a study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University, 15 out of 44 participants said they chose to be anonymous online because they had previously had negative experiences where they had not maintained an anonymous presence. [19] These experiences include stalking, publishing private information by an opposing political school group, or scamming an individual into moving to another country for a job that did not exist.
