There is no automatic right to anonymity when posting on someone else's website. If you post something publicly, surely the expectation is that you're fine with anyone seeing it. If the BBC chooses to share that with your boss, why is it different to anyone else choosing to share it with a member of the public.
If you don't want everyone to know that you're a dick, don't be a dick in public.
Otherwise the BBC would quickly find that when they are late paying the contractors who work on their website their credit cards mysteriously get charged for the services rendered.
I don't know what the status of private communications with the BBC would be in this regard, but if you're using their platform to publish, then I think that my argument holds.
However, if the publisher you sent the book to publishs it, then goes to your boss with the intent of getting you in trouble and/or fired, you might have something to sue over.
Think of it like this: If I'm a web developer and I haven't received payment for my services I can withhold those services or even retain control of the product I am providing or use the courts to enforce the contract, but if I used the client's credit card info to enforce fines and pay myself I have broken the law regardless of whether I put it in the contract.
If it's somebody posting from home in their own time, dobbing them in seems a bit weird. How do they know who I work for?
I assume you never did something embarrassing in a bar? Or were more than a little drunk?
If you'd like to add, "tattling to your employer" to that list I suggest you talk to parliament. They get awfully upset when you try to "do things for them" via cellophane business contracts.
The answer is that there are existing federal statutes in place to allow this. They are controversial and often challenged. Tow truck drivers operate in a grey area of the law and are frequently found to be in violation of the law. I would hope that the BBC values their operating license more than my local tow company.
Put another way, anyone who posts anything on your site, you have a right to discover the name of. Do you agree with this satement? Do you agree that YCombinator, owner of the site you are posting this on, has a right to investigate and discover your name? (Which you are not posting under.)
For me, I would think that would be the case if you cross a certain line. They do not have the right to discover that you're actually (celebrity investor) and then, since of course you have "no right to anonymity", publish the fact that (celebrity investor) comments here.
I think this example logically proves that in fact you do have a right to post anonymously. (Since if you didn't, sites would have a right to go to any length to discover your identity.) Or what am I missing? I might have a flaw in the deduction made in this comment and am open to someone pointing it out.
"Where the BBC reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any applicable laws"
They are actually reaching out to claim you have violated laws. Is this not potentially libelous?
But what is the legal status of the threat itself, not carried out?
If there are no legal ramifications from merely threatening to perpetrate tortious interference, then it seems like a useful troll deterrent tool that the BBC has a right to use on their own site.
If you have a problem with service and complain to a manager, then you're clearly not a "third party"; the contract between the employee and fast food restaurant has everything to do with serving you.
Note that the BBC are not saying that they will contact your employer only if it can be determined that you used the employer's time and equipment to post the comments. Even if you post those comments using your own residential internet connection on your own time, they threaten to contact your employer.
> We reserve the right to use or share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Japan Today Terms of Use, or as otherwise required by law.
The difference is that unlike Japan Today, and other privacy policies mentioned elsewhere on this page, the BBC is trying to tell you whom the information will be disclosed to, pursuant to the guidelines from the U.K. Information Commissioner on privacy policies, but somewhat ineptly. Japan Today tells you that it may "share information", but nothing whatsoever about whom that is likely to be with. The BBC is trying to tell you whom it is likely to be sharing information with.
And it should come as no surprise that if you are posting from a work computer, one of the people it is going to be sharing the information with is the company that your IP address backtracks to.
All parties are invited to remember, one guy's considered opinion is another guy's hate speech.
And then, ever so often, the wind changes, the tables are turned, those in the wrong are now in the right, and those in the right are now everybody's laughing stock.
Who defines the standards? In this case, the BBC.
Why do there need to be "standards of acceptability" at all? Seems to me the better world is one in which people don't interfere in other people's employment.
Proving real damage to the BBC due to what they perceive to be "hate speech" is difficult.
The BBC has put in their terms that they reserve the right to cause real financial harm to those they perceive to be writing "hate speech".
I can put in my contract that I reserve the right to murder you, and if you sign it I'm still going to jail. Such is the case here. The BBC just made themselves look like idiots for no enforceable reason.