Amazon: Drop the mask

And the era of online anonymity contines to wane ... the Wall Street Journal tells the backstory behind Amazon.com's new Real Names system, which encourages product reviewers to attach their legal, offline names to reviews:

Amazon still allows reviewers to sign their comments with pen names, effectively concealing their identity from other Amazon users. But even these reviewers need to supply a credit card or purchase history. Previously, users could easily open multiple Amazon accounts from which they could post multiple reviews of the same product. The new system is intended to block that practice.

The changes are an effort to bring greater integrity to the influential Amazon rating system, which has been open to abuse by users settling personal scores or heaping praise on their own works. The system has infuriated some authors whose works were panned in multiple reviews that the authors suspect were the work of the same person. Other users wonder whether books or other items that receive reams of kudos may have been praised by a small group of fans.

More broadly, the new rules attempt to address a perennial problem posed by the anonymity of the Internet: How to identify people who post comments online, be they would-be book critics or people with a bone to pick about a certain product.