I don't think it's a right. I do think it's a thing people got used to and some valued and is now being taken away, and that tends to make people cranky.
I guess you could argue it's a right under "right of way" logic -- if you let people cut across your field, eventually they get a right to cut across your field and you can't decide to take it away any more. At least in US law. But I think applying that to the Internet would result in a lot of web sites suddenly getting rid of all their cool functionality, so let's not.
I have no problem reviewing under my real name. But all other things being equal, I'd prefer not to, because I'd prefer to keep a consistant Internet identity. Not to decrease my accountability, but to increase it -- so that people know that the same girl who's been shooting her mouth off in your fanfic thread is the one who is giving a bad review to the Lima Bean and Tang diet book, or whatever.
And since my main online identity these days is the one that has the fanfic legal issues you mention, I don't want to associate it and my real name in the same place. So if I hafta put my real name, I hafta NOT put the name that people are likely to actually know. Which makes the review marginally less useful/credible. But is not that big a deal, really, since I almost never review on Amazon anyway.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-25 08:15 am (UTC)I guess you could argue it's a right under "right of way" logic -- if you let people cut across your field, eventually they get a right to cut across your field and you can't decide to take it away any more. At least in US law. But I think applying that to the Internet would result in a lot of web sites suddenly getting rid of all their cool functionality, so let's not.
I have no problem reviewing under my real name. But all other things being equal, I'd prefer not to, because I'd prefer to keep a consistant Internet identity. Not to decrease my accountability, but to increase it -- so that people know that the same girl who's been shooting her mouth off in your fanfic thread is the one who is giving a bad review to the Lima Bean and Tang diet book, or whatever.
And since my main online identity these days is the one that has the fanfic legal issues you mention, I don't want to associate it and my real name in the same place. So if I hafta put my real name, I hafta NOT put the name that people are likely to actually know. Which makes the review marginally less useful/credible. But is not that big a deal, really, since I almost never review on Amazon anyway.