There have been a few cases recently that have involved previously-anonymous commenters getting outed by the courts. Where’s the line between free speech and getting unmasked?

You’re anonymous when you post comments online–except when you’re not. Though many Internet users still believe that their identities are as hidden as they choose to make them, online anonymity is not always guaranteed and, in fact, there’s no way to stay truly anonymous. There is always a company somewhere that has information that can be traced back to you, whether it’s Google (GOOG) or your ISP, and judges have shown themselves willing to issue subpoenas to unmask anonymous posters.

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New Zealand agreed this week to reconsider a controversial law that cut off Internet access to people accused of copyright violations.

The country’s parliament passed Section 92a of the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act in 2008, also known as the “three-strikes” rule, which would have come into play in February 2009. If an Internet user was even accused of file-sharing or otherwise violating copyright laws, his or her Internet-service provider would cut off service.

The implementation of the amendment was pushed back to March 27 so that ISPs could agree on a code of conduct, but the rallying cry from Internet free-speech organizations such as the Creative Freedom Foundation pushed the Parliament to rethink its strategy.

How could a democratic government consider cutting off Internet access for people who haven’t been convicted of a copyright violation? Danny O’Brien, the international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that New Zealand changed its copyright law to be in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the U.S., but then chose to interpret the language differently than the U.S.

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The Internet engineering community is grappling with what to do about a serious flaw in the DNS discovered this summer, and the ongoing debate brings to mind a famous quotation from Voltaire: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

At issue is whether the group should use its resources to encourage DNS registries, ISPs and enterprises to upgrade to the ultimate DNS security solution known as DNSSEC, or whether it should tweak the DNS protocols to address the so-called Kaminsky bug as an interim step.

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We recently wrote about how you should probably be more nervous about the data your ISP is collecting rather than what Google is collecting, because your ISP has access to a lot more data, and the data it has isn’t data that you chose to give, as in the case of Google. Plus, ISPs have a long history of selling that data. Now, a new study is showing that most people have no idea that their ISPs track and sell their data, with many believing that an ISP would need to first let them know if they were doing that. In fact, many people are quite concerned about how that data would be used, not realizing that it’s already being sold. And, of course, it’s not just being sold to ad companies like NebuAd and Phorm, but to Web site-tracking firms like Compete and Hitwise.

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The Free Press issued a report this afternoon casting doubt on the theory of network congestion that has been cited by ISPs as the reason behind P2P blocking or broadband caps, and offering more rational solutions for dealing with sporadic congestion. It also claims that tiered broadband and limitation pricing–in which a carrier charges per gigabyte fee after users exceed a certain cap–is unlikely to become reality. Prior to the report coming out, I had spent the afternoon asking people about this issue, trying to figure out if our series of tubes is really clogged or if the carriers are merely seeking financial and/or competitive gain.

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Japan’s four big ISP organizations have taken a logical step toward controlling file sharing: Flagrant violators will be warned via email and then disconnected, the Yomiuri Shimbun says. Although this practice will horrify the content-should-be-free community, it’s actually a far more sensible approach than, say, the RIAA’s suing sharers. It is also, presumably, a smart step for ISPs struggling to control the exploding use of bandwidth.

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This certainly isn’t the first time it’s been proposed, but it appears that the RIAA is potentially warming up to the idea of a “music surcharge” that would have ISPs pay $5 a month in order to allow anyone to share music online. Just a month ago, we were discussing why this is a bad idea. First, it’s effectively treating everyone as a criminal and forcing those who don’t download or share music to subsidize everyone who does. Second, and much more importantly, it’s not necessary. If there’s anything that the past five years (and the past year especially) have taught us, it’s that there are many different ways for musicians to make money without requiring the government to step in and set up a business model for them. In other words, there’s no compelling need for such a mandated system. Third, once you do this, it opens up additional questions from other industries. Will the government need to set up laws that prop up their business models as well?

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The race is on to get the last word in on the Comcast/BitTorrent controversy. With 10 days left to file, telcos, trade and advocacy groups are sending the Federal Communications Commission their statements on whether Comcast and other ISPs purposefully degrade peer-to-peer traffic, and if so, what to do about it. Not surprisingly, the debate pits broadband content providers and advocacy groups against the big telcos, cable companies and their trade association backers.

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Comcast, the second largest Internet service provider in the country, is making the controversial and aggressive case that Internet service providers should be allowed to serve as traffic cops on the Internet. In an 80-page filing with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday, the company says it has a right to clamp down on the use of peer-to-peer file-sharing programs on its network to preserve the smooth flow of bits to and from all its customers. The filing was in response to an FCC complaint from network neutrality groups in November after the Associated Press revealed that Comcast was stopping some customers from using BitTorrent, a file-sharing program often used to swap copyrighted copies of songs and movies over the Internet.

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While the IFPI and the RIAA have been actively pushing for ISP liability for file-sharing, it appears some in the industry are taking it even further. U2’s manager for 30 years, Paul McGuinness, gave a talk at the Midem conference where he blamed Silicon Valley’s “hippie values” for creating the problem and demanded that tech companies of all stripes start paying the recording industry. He’s talking not only about ISPs, but also Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and basically every other successful tech company. There are so many problems with this, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

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