There are so many paradoxes regarding the interlinking issues of free speech, anonymity, and privacy. The internet provides a veil of anonymity to individuals that allows them to feel less restricted in terms of what they can say and speak in the cyber realm, but this anonymity has created tensions in how to deal with speech that is critical and defamatory towards other individuals online. One of the main clarifications that needs to be made in dealing with these paradoxes of free speech on the internet is whether the cyber realm is separate from the physical realm in the sense that it has its own rules and regulations. If this distinction was made, it would most definitely solve these problems. Individuals would recognize that the internet is a place where individuals have a different kind of freedom to say whatever they choose. However, these two realms cannot be treated separately from one another because not only is the internet a means in which individuals in the physical realm make transactions, do their work, and interact, there is also an emotional and psychological component of individuals that connects the digital to the real world. We cannot help but react to news and speech that we read online with physical emotions; we have yet to develop 'cyber emotions'.

Individuals may have a right to speak and remain anonymous online, but because the cyber and physical realms are so linked, the cyber realm cannot be ruled with its own rules that disregard the rules that have already been set in place, acknowledged, and followed in the physical realm. In creating laws to regulate the speech online, lawmakers must remain consistent with how free speech has been treated in the physical realm, and those who break those rules need to be punished. When individuals go online, we come to the cyber realm with the conceptions and beliefs that the rules that we live by in the physical realm will be respected online. We expect to not be faced with discrimination, hate mail, and slander in the real world, and I believe that those individuals who have break these rules and do not respect the opinions of others must be punished by having their identity revealed in order to have justice and protection for individuals online. The respect for others should not just fly out of the window once we log online. We have a responsibility to this society and to our social norms as J mentioned to maintain the same respect towards individuals in the physical and cyber realm.

A point of discussion that I did not address in my reading response that I would like to discuss in class is the idea of speech being "newsworthy" and a "legitimate concern to the public." The examples seemed to be relatively vague in the readings and I would like to discuss the implications of the definitions of these terms when applying them to online speech.