Tim it's not largely academic at all. Firstly, m69.hunt has not said that he/she was deliberately masking their IP address. He/she said that he/she was not using their real name or details. And even if they were masking an IP - which they have not admitted to - what exactly does it matter? There is nothing dishonest about using a proxy. They speed up browsing by caching content, and crucially, they provide an added layer of security for the end user. This is especially useful on an Internet where so many people use home routers that remain connected for extended periods and so do not have regular DHCP release. In a world where identity theft is rife, the non-disclosure of information is a perfectly sound thing to do. You cannot jump to the conclusion that just because someone does it and disagrees with you and supports your target that they are, by definition, hiding some dark agenda. That's just nuts. And anyway, using a proxy is a matter of choice just like dialing 141 into a phone before you dial someone. Hell, BT even offer it as an automatic service. I have it on my home land line. My number is only ever going to be given out to people I choose to give it out to, not everyone I call. The same is true of my identity online and source address online. I don't ask a bloke I start talking to in a pub to provide photo evidence when he says he's called Bob. Do you? There is another reason why the subject's not academic, and that is because your lack of knowledge about the Internet has a direct relation to many of the arguments you bang on about. As I said before, a clueless person isn't dangerous, but a little bit of knowledge is. This is because it means that grandiose claims of certainty are made which are actually pure speculative conjecture all stemming from that lack of knowledge in the first place. You've been doing this sort of thing for a while now, and I think it needs to stop. Now, on this point about the "evidence". I note you mention that you have the mirrors saved to disk and they are "neatly time-stamped". What do time-stamps have to do with anything? They're meaningless. First of all they're set to the system clock, so, all you have to do is change the date or timezone when you save them and they can easily time warp. Second, the "create", "last modified" and "last accessed" attributes on any file are easily manipulated anyway by such beautiful things as non time-stamp preserved copies. That is why when it comes to using electronic data as proof in court so little of it actually gets used because it remains so easy to fake. Whilst we're on this subject of your "evidence" though and the general subject of this post/thread, it's worth noting this. You have ZERO legal right to demand information from anyones logs.... period. If you have a problem with a comment you consider libelous on someone else's website - and you understand this because you have personal experience - you report it via the abuse@ alias mechanism as laid out in rfc 2142. You report it to either the hosting provider or the network provider if the server in question is co-located. What you don't do is start harassing someone via email (and I mean anyone, not just your current targets). Your approach is not the way the Internet community - something you say you care about - has said problems should be dealt with. If you want people to "play by the rules" then I suggest that you start doing it yourself. There are thousands of rfc's out there, not just technical but social, that relate directly to dealing with issues online that we, that is the Internet community as a whole, have drawn up, discussed, and accepted over the past 38 years. We not only manage devices and the network by these standards, but we manage our social interactions by them too, especially when it comes to allegations of abuse. Frankly, I'm sick to the back teeth of having to read you pontificating about your "expertise" when it's clearly evident that you actually know very little about how the Internet both works and is managed. Sure, you're brilliant with photoshop, great with flash, amazingly creative even if your politics are in my opinion wrong, but the way you go about dealing with things on other people's websites that you want removed is the complete antithesis of the standards by which the Internet is self-regulated. If you're not happy with the way things are, then play by the rules and submit an RFC. Subject your ideas to the whole community and let us all decide on whether it is should become a standard. Incidentally, I'm not wasting my time by posting this as I'm not doing anything important at the moment, and in fact have bugger all to do. However, you're right on one thing for once. I am wasting your time by making you read this and decide whether to allow it through moderation. I'll also be wasting your time during the reply that you're trying to decide whether or not to write at this very moment. A reply I should add that will probably accuse me of ignoring your moral outrage about the whole incident, whilst simultaneously failing to realise that my criticism is about the process by which you prosecute your concerns rather than of the veracity of your concerns which I don't particularly care about.