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15 J.L. & Com. 395 (1995-1996)
Flood Control on the Information Ocean: Living with Anonymity, Digital Cash, and Distributed Databases

handle is hein.journals/jlac15 and id is 401 raw text is: REGULATION OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FLOOD CONTROL ON THE INFORMATION OCEAN: LIVING WITH ANONYMITY, DIGITAL CASH, AND DISTRIBUTED DATABASES A. Michael Froomkin* Table of Contents Introduction ............................................ 398 I. The Moral and Social Environment .................. 402 A. Costs of Anonymity ........................... 402 B. Advantages of Anonymity ...................... 407 C. Legislating Accountability ...................... 410 * Copyright 1996 A. Michael Froomkin. All Rights Reserved. Associate Professor, Univer- sity of Miami School of Law. B.A. 1982, Yale College; M.Phil. 1984, Cambridge University; J.D. 1987, Yale Law School. Internet: froomkin@law.miami.edu. I received significant advice, comments, suggestions, and in several cases careful readings of earlier drafts, from Phil Agre, Caroline Bradley, Mary Coombs, Hal Finney, Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., Lucky Green, Patrick Gudridge, Richard Field, Trotter Hardy, Lili Levi, Mark Lemley, Tim May, Marcel van der Peijl, David Post, Peggy Radin, Steve Schnably, Bill Stewart, Peter Swire, Stephen F. Williams, and Eugene Volokh. I also benefited from the ideas posted by members of the cyberia-l, cypherpunks, and e-cash mailing lists. SueAnn Campbell and Nora de la Garza provided library support. Rosalia Lliraldi provided secretarial assis- tance. Portions of this paper, particularly in Part II, are a revised version of an electronically pub- lished paper, A. Michael Froomkin, Anonymity and its Enmities, 1 J. ONLINE L. Article 4 (1995), available online http://www.law.corell.edu/jol/froomkin.htmi. I particularly wish to thank Dean Peter Shane and Pam Samuelson for inviting me to partici- pate in the panel entitled The Regulation of Computing and Information Technology at the Con- ference for the Second Century of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law at which an earlier draft of this paper was presented. Unless otherwise stated, this article attempts to reflect legal and technical developments up to January 1, 1996.