1st Amendment right to speak anonymously?

Google was recently ordered by a court this week to reveal the identity of a Blogger user that made disparaging remarks against a Canadian model. The model sued Google to force them to reveal the name of the author of the blog, presumably so she could sue them for libel and defamation.

Now comes news that the outed blogger is suing Google, http://mashable.com/2009/08/24/skanks-of-new-york-lawsuit/. The author wants up to $15 million from Google for failing to defend her privacy. Her claim is that she has a 1st amendment right to speak anonymously.

The 1st Amendment right to anonymous speech has been tested a number of times and is generally upheld. Most of the cases involve political or religious speech though. Do you have a right to anonymity if you engage in illegal or libelous speech though?

If I post a video of criminal activity that I clearly either witnessed or participated in anonymously do you think I would have my identity protected by YouTube? I don't think so, the police would be in their right to seek me out to investigate the crime.

Same thing goes with libelous or defamatory statements. If you run around spreading harmful lies about someone you can expect that person to try to locate you and sue you for libel. Especially if that person is famous. It does not matter whether you do this online or offline, libel is libel and can get you sued.

There are a lot of protections for what we can say here in the U.S. We can badmouth our government, praise our religion, and even rant against corporations. But when we maliciously lie and defame private individuals those individuals have a right of redress and that right can get our right of anonymous free speech stripped away from us.

You can say a lot of things in this country but you can also go too far. If you go too far, you have a good chance of being made to pay for it.