tony286

This is anathema to Webheads. "People are cruel," says Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer at MySpace, which requires no ID data for any post. "Anonymity doesn't inspire this, but it does remove the fear to think, to act and to explore." Still, MySpace, in June, launched a phone hotline for complaints about content. "This industry has to work together to find solutions. I hope this can be a call to action," he says.

On the Net, anonymity saves lives. In Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has made it illegal to criticize the government. An underground activist group called Sokwanele has an anonymous blog that 1,420 other sites link to. It has been cited in the New York Times and in the Guardian in Britain. "Without the protection of anonymity, we would be arrested," says one Sokwanele contributor. The charge could be treason, the penalty death.

In Illinois a mother of four children, who is bipolar and in an abusive relationship, tells FORBES how she was ready to try suicide by jumping from her third-floor balcony. Then she paused, stepped inside and logged on to a site that had consoled her before: Experience Project. "I can see my children's smiling faces because of EP. Here I could speak freely. No one judged me," she says. At Ivescrewedup.com, run by the Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, Fla., anonymous posters put up 100 items a day on abortion, eating disorders, drug abuse and more.

Anonymity is key to "renewal and forgiveness, and these are all things that happen online now," says Michael Godwin, a former counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Democracy requires faith that "even at our self-interested worst, we're basically pretty good. The Web would be un-American without that belief." He adds: "Unfortunately, some people will be genuinely hurt by this."

Godwin now is general counsel for the parent of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, which itself got fooled by anonymity. In July 2006 the New Yorker profiled the site and quoted an administrator who referees disputes over entries. Wikipedia knew him only as "Essjay," a tenured professor with "a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law." But Essjay actually was a 24-year-old poser who holds no advanced degrees and doesn't teach, according to a correction published by the magazine. He quit, but Wikipedia still doesn't check the credentials of contributors.

Even some Net insiders fret over this. "The Web is just too wild," says Kim Cameron, identity czar at Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), which, like other vendors, is rolling out products aimed at bringing more identity to the Web. Timothy O'Reilly, a publisher and one of the Web's biggest cheerleaders, now calls for guardrails: "The perception right now is that standing up for good things is wussy, but a lot of people want more civility."

Katherine Sierra is one of them, and it was her case that prompted O'Reilly's view. An expert on online communities, she was stunned in March to read an anonymous post on her blog that began: "i hope someone slits your throat. ?" Yet she didn't delete it--that would undermine free speech. This emboldened others. On a Web site called Meankids a user posted her photo alongside an image of a hangman's noose. "The only thing Kathy has to offer is that noose in her neck size," wrote a poster calling himself "joey." She contacted the site--yet didn't directly ask to remove the threatening fare, fearing such a request would "only make it worse." The owners of Meankids later took the entire site down. On the Unclebobisms site, a doctored photo had her gasping for air with sheer panties stretched across her face. Caption: "I dream of Kathy Sierra ? head first."