A normal Topix small-town discussion forum includes a purported attempt to out a gay man, accusations that so-and-so has AIDS, a diatribe against miscegenation, public shaming of "bad parents," announcement that this or that person is a crackhead, and more. All of these posts are anonymous.

In case you missed...

Last month's speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued for a global "right to connect" to the Internet in light of the ongoing Middle Eastern turmoil. Such a speech may now be an annual tradition, as the US Government is now embarked on a concerted offensive to...

The privacy wagon is back in town, and justifiably irate and alarmed souls are jumping aboard, in protest against Google's spy car as the latest in a seemingly endless stream of high-tech transgressions. Understanding this takes some unpacking.

If you're lucky, you might have encountered a Google spy car --...

Google has made good on its threat to close its China-based search service in response to state censorship and hacker intrusions. The response in the U.S. is predictable. Nicholas D. Kristof set the tone last January, when he wrote that "Google's decision to stand up to Chinese cyberoppression...

It looks as though the Obama pledge for evidence-based policy will take a blow on Tuesday, when FCC commissioners will testify in House and Senate hearings about the national broadband plan.

The Bush administration policy was not to have a broadband plan at all, and so at the dawn of...

As everybody knows, the current apotheosis of TV's continuing convergence with the Internet is YouTube. Widely hailed as the new face of television, YouTube's user-generated content has gained popularity by allowing a million video flowers to bloom; claiming two-thirds of all video views in the United States, YouTube draws ten...