Ethics online...

Ethics online is a complicated matter... The right for free speech in the online environment is incredibly important, yet there is some problems connected to it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a foundation that works very actively to protect free speech online, and their latest campaign is mainly concerned with bloggers and citizen journalists, which is quite relevant since this is a blog. On the foundation's website there is nine rights listed, for example the right to blog anonymously, keep one's sources confidential and have the right to blog about one's workplace, which anyone who is blogging should be entitled to. I totally agree with these rights, especially when it comes to countries where the freedom of speech is very limited, like for example China. Here people cannot even mention the words democracy and civil society in either blogs or emails, and if they do blogs will get barred and emials will bounce back.

However in my opinion blogs and articles looses credibility and accountability by being anonymous or having its sources classified. By signing off with one's name at the bottom, one ads a lot of credibility and thereby make sure that there is back up for stated opinions. Naturally, in situation where the signing of one's name may have very serious consequences, then of course it is acceptable to write anonymously. But as far as possible I think everyone that is blogging should stand behind their opinions expressed in their blogs by adding one's name to it.