wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Boy did that segment ever suck. Brian, your show may be good, but so far, it doesn't really merit a weekend retrospective. Let's keep the egos in check?

With regard to the transperency of the internet:

The common view of many British Expatriates stems from the absence of a First Amendment in Great (?) Britain.

As a DJ for a college radio station in the mid 1980's I frequently received calls warning me that the FCC would yank our license for playing "gangsta rap" prototype songs by (you guessed it) British students.

Then, as now, I have to remind them that here in the United States we enjoy protection under the First Amendment, and specifically in the present case a STATE effort to force disclosure of identity on the internet operates as a PRIOR RESTRAINT of its citizens, and would be per se unconstitutional.

Further, I would call the guest an elitist with regard to his views on civility on the internet. My view of civility is certainly quite different than his, but I would not submit to having your guest decide whether the manner in which I choose to express myself is civil enough to contribute to the free marketplace of ideas (be it pooping on his doorstep or a strongly worded letter).

As to controlling "unacceptable" behaviors stemming from anonymity, he is within his rights to enforce all existing civil and criminal laws and report terms of service violations if he feels expression on the internet is inappropriate, fraudulent or otherwise harmful. He may not, however, tell me when and where I must expose my identity.

Finally, his view that music is best handled by the record companies and "professionals" contains a fatal flaw. He referred quite openly to the music needing to make money as a basis for its worth. Any artist who creates something should not be doing it for the money. I feel better that the public is viewing the work without the taint of SONY, BMG, EMI, GE or another corporate entity, or is being marketed by the William Morris Agency or some alcohol company or tobacco company. Quite frankly, I think he must have some personal financial stake in making sure that music on the web is pay to play (he did create the burgeoning music download system or part of it, didn't he?).

Please note that while my email actually IS my name in this case, I prefer that you only use my first name, unless providing the address to your guest for a direct response. Thank you.

I'm not sure if this came up already in the two conversations about it on your show, but in a way the anonymity we see on the internet seems to be a result of the transparency that the internet has created. So, it is a fine line, or a Catch-22 or one of those cliches...

It is so easy to "research" (i.e. google) someone you've just met and discover their online personality along with all sorts of other random bits of information. I can easily understand why people would choose to stay anonymous on the internet, while at the same time I can not stand it when people use that same anonymity to behave badly.

I recently fired a therapist and still had a couple of transitional sessions before moving on. I didn't just say 'see ya'.

I thought the therapist session was rather harsh and unrealistic.

Many newspaper blogs devolve into personal attacks and lose focus on the original point of the posts. This may be a form of Darwinism. I think that if ten or twenty habitual posters can hijack a blog, then new people will stay away and the blog will become the equivalent of the coccyx.

On the other hand, blogs like Gawker are white hot for the fifteen seconds (not minutes) that issues like Paris Hilton are front and center.

With the state of the world being what it is and the real problems to worry about...does anyone really care what happens to a fictional character in a TV melodrama????????