If you want fair libel law for the Internet age, get involved

Anonymity comes with a price though. You don't have any sort of reputation to build on when making claims about other people. If you want people to have more of a reason to believe what you say, putting your name on it should carry more weight. That should be the balance here.

1. UK != England and Wales. (Scottish law is radically different -- based on defamation rather than libel/slander -- and oddly enough, Scotland isn't a libel shopping destination.)

2. The English libel law (which is what's up for reform this year) was pushed through in the 18th century as an alternative to the dueling field for blue-bloods with swords to defend their honour. It succeeded admirably in reducing the death rate, but the challenge/defense model implicit in a mediated replacement for dueling between peers doesn't transfer well to a situation where we have corporations using it as a vehicle for SLAPPs.

I'd really like to see, as a principle of law, the axiom that corporations do not have a personal reputation that can be impugned-- that reputation only applies to living human beings. As an example of why, consider the McLibel Case: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/McLibel