A roundtable on “Banning Online Nicknames and Avatars (overcoming online anonymity) – Arguments For and Against” was held on February 25 in the hall of the Scientific Council of the Moscow State Law Academy named after Kutafin. The event was organized by IP CLUB and the Coordination Center for TLD RU.
Moderators were Dmitry Afanasiev (head and coordinator of the expert council of the State Duma Committee for Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications) and Andrey Vorobyev (director of the Coordination Center for TLD RU).
The participants discussed two opposing trends in the Internet – users seeking anonymity and the authorities looking to ban anonymity. Those in favor of anonymity are seeking technical ways of overcoming the anonymity ban. They also spoke about how anonymity relates to people’s freedom of expression.
Deputy Head of the Coordination Center Sergey Kopylov elaborated on how online anonymity helped prevent personal identity theft: “The theft of personal identities is fairly common in social networks; I think many of us have come across celebrities’ fake accounts. It is very hard to address the problem but online anonymity helps reduce its scope. As for law violations, it is up to law-enforcement agencies to deal with them. And I doubt that a ban on anonymity could seriously reduce the rate of cyber-crime.”
Other participants in the discussion were Mikhail Yakushev (ICANN), Dmitry Marinichev (Internet ombudsman), Matvey Alekseyev (Rambler), Marina Rozhkova (Moscow State Law Academy), government officials, Internet companies’ experts, and other specialists.
The next roundtable will take place on March 31 and will discuss “Domain Names: New Realities.”
