Obama Likes the Internet, So He’ll Probably Veto SOPA if It Gets That Far

Will he or won’t he?
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4chan Founder Chris Poole: It’s Not That I Love Anonymity, It’s That I Hate Facebook’s Identity Requirements

“We all have multiple identities. It’s not abnormal; it’s just part of being human,” 4chan founder Christopher Poole said at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
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What’s Really Behind The Facebook/Google Real Name Debate?

It seems to me that the larger issue in this ongoing real names debate is not who you say you are, but the usefulness of a unified Web identity.
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Janrain Raises $15.5M for Social Log-ins

Managing online identities used to be a niche cause full of acronyms and hypotheticals, but now that the Web is getting more personalized it’s become obvious how integral this topic is.
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LAL People Helps Find Friends Anonymously

LikeALittle, also known as LAL, is launching its first non-college-oriented app today, which will help users with common interests and nearby locations find each other.
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With Canvas, Can "Moot" Bottle 4chan and Sell It?

Christopher “Moot” Poole, the creator of 4chan, today opened up testing of an image-sharing community called Canvas, which seems a lot like 4chan without the anonymity.

News Byte

China to Require Real Names for Online Interactive Processes

Chinese Internet regulator Wang Chen aims to radically reduce options for anonymity available to Web users in China, calling for a “real name registration system” that would make it impossible for people to post comments or access information anonymously. The fact that a full transcript of his comments, originally made in April, remained unavailable until unearthed this week by Human Rights In China, signals to some that Beijing is well aware of the unpopularity of its push for tighter regulation–a lesson learned well recently by World of Warcraft creator Blizzard, which abandoned its own real name system last week.

Map Strips a Bit of Anonymity From Chatroulette

A new site that maps users of Chatroulette is taking a little of the anonymity out of the random video-chat service. The Laughing Squid blog points us to the site, Chatroulettemap.com, which puts users–and their images–on a Google map, based on their IP address.

On the Internet, Everybody Knows You’re a Name-Caller: Google Unmasks the “Skank” Blogger

Want to call someone a “skank” on the Web while remaining anonymous? Might want to rethink that: Following an order from a New York court, Google has outed a woman who insulted a former model using the company’s Blogger service.
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To Avoid Korean Law, YouTube Disables Some Features

YouTube’s cat-and-mouse game with governments abroad continues. To avoid a South Korean law that would require users who upload or comment on videos to first register with their real names, YouTube last week disabled those two features on its local Korean site, according to the company. The move garnered new attention Monday, after it was reported by a Korean publication, Hankyoreh.