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Individuals’ Ability to Communicate Anonymously Via the Internet Is Threatened

7:00 pm

Jonathan D. Wallace is an attorney and the author of Sex, Law, and Cyberspace: Freedom and Censorship on the Frontiers of the Online Revolution.

In a 1997 decision, a Federal district court in Georgia invalidated a state law criminalizing anonymous and pseudonymous Internet communications. In so doing, the court issued a decision consistent with centuries of American tradition and jurisprudence. Throughout the history of the U.S., pseudonymous and anonymous authors have made a rich contribution to political discourse. Had the court held any other way, it would have fallen into the common trap of treating the Internet as being unique, unrelated to any prior communications media. Instead, the court recognized that there is no distinction to be drawn between anonymous communications on the Net and in a leaflet or book.

The Rich Tradition of Anonymous Speech

Controversial and thought-provoking speech has frequently been issued from under the cover of anonymity, by writers who feared prosecution or worse if their identities were known. The authors of Cato’s Letters, an influential series of essays about freedom of speech and political liberty published from 1720 on, were two British men, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Cato’s Letters had a wide following in America.

In 1735, printer John Peter Zenger was arrested for seditious libel for publishing pseudonymous essays by Lewis Morris, James Alexander, and others attacking New York Governor William Cosby. Zenger also republished several of Cato’s Letters. Andrew Hamilton defended Zenger. In his stirring oration to the jury, he asked them to lay "a foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors" the right of "exposing and opposing arbitrary power … by speaking and writing truth." The jury’s acquittal of Zenger helped to end prosecutions of American writers and publishers under British common law.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, acclaimed as the work which sparked Americans to think about separating from Britain, was first published signed simply "An Englishman." Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison wrote The Federalist Papers under the joint pseudonym "Publius."

Pseudonymity continued to play an important role in political speech in the 20th century. George Kennan, a high-ranking member of General George Marshall and President Harry Truman’s staff, considered by many to be the architect of America’s policy of "containment," signed his influential 1947 essay, "The Sources of Soviet Power," merely as "X." Politicians, including presidents, communicate anonymously with the media when they wish to express ideas or disseminate information without attribution, and press reports are full of quotes attributed to sources such as "a senior State Department official" or a "senior White House staff member." Pseudonymity has also protected people stigmatized by prior political speech or association; many blacklisted writers continued to work throughout the McCarthy era by using names other than their own.

Protected by the First Amendment

The Supreme Court has consistently held that anonymous and pseudonymous speech is protected by the First Amendment. In 1995, in McIntyre v. Ohio Campaign Commission, the Court invalidated an Ohio ordinance requiring the authors of campaign leaflets to identify themselves. McIntyre had been fined for handing out anonymous leaflets during a local school board campaign. The Court repeated what it had said in a prior case: "Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind." It recognized that authors may have a variety of valid motives for shielding their identity, including fear of retaliation.

The Court placed McIntyre’s leaflet in the context of centuries of anonymous political discourse: "Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority." Although the Supreme Court usually refers only to prior case law and scholarly legal writings in its holdings, the justices took the unusual measure of citing John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty in support of the proposition that anonymity is a protection against the majority’s tyranny.

The parallel between McIntyre’s leaflet and an unsigned Web page or e-mail on a political topic is obvious. Nevertheless, people who fail to see the analogy between the Internet and print media continue to call for a ban on anonymity in cyberspace.

In 1996, the Georgia legislature passed H.B. 1630, an amendment to the state’s Computer Systems Protection Act, making it a misdemeanor for one "knowingly to transmit any data through a computer network [using] any individual name … to falsely identify the person … transmitting such data….

"Immediately, a group of plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union and the author of this article brought suit in Federal district court in Georgia challenging the constitutionality of the law. The district court granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the act, holding that "the statute’s prohibition of Internet transmissions which ‘falsely identify’ the sender constitutes a presumptively invalid content-based restriction" under McIntyre.

The court concluded that the statute was vague and overbroad because it was "not drafted with the precision necessary for laws regulating speech. On its face, the act prohibits such protected speech as the use of false identification to avoid social ostracism, to prevent discrimination and harassment, and to protect privacy … a prohibition with well-recognized first amendment problems." The preliminary injunction was later converted into a permanent one, and the state of Georgia decided not to make an appeal, so the district court’s ruling became the final and definitive statement on H.B. 1630.

Implications for the Internet

"The ultimate implication, I believe, is that to achieve a civilized form of cyberspace, we have to limit the use of anonymous communications," David Johnson wrote in "The Unscrupulous Diner’s Dilemma and Anonymity in Cyberspace." In a Columbia Law Review note published in October, 1996, Noah Levine called for "a simple statute … requiring administrators of anonymous remailers to maintain records of users in a manner which allows for the identification of senders of specific messages." Levine, like most commentators on this side of the issue, failed to say why McIntyre would not apply in cyberspace.

The Supreme Court said in Reno v. ACLU that, "Through the use of Web pages, mail exploders and newsgroups, [any Net user] can become a pamphleteer." As the Court recognized, a Web page is an electronic leaflet. However, if proponents of Internet anonymity legislation have their way, the same text may be treated differently depending on whether it is printed on paper or stored in electronic form. These proponents, therefore, incur a responsibility to explain why Internet communications are to be treated differently than print communications.

There are a limited number of legal theories that advocates of regulation have used to justify such treatment, and the two most important ones have already been rejected by the Supreme Court. Radio and broadcast television have been more tightly regulated than print media based on a theory of "spectrum scarcity," while a "pervasiveness" doctrine first raised in F.C.C. v. Pacifica (the "seven dirty words" case) has been used to justify the regulation of speech disseminated both by broadcast and cable media. While no one can reasonably argue that the Net is a "scarce" medium, proponents of Interact censorship relied very heavily on the argument that it is "pervasive," meaning that it comes into the house and may present speech inappropriate for minors. In 1999, in affirming the unconstitutionality of the Communications Decency Act, the Supreme Court decisively held that the Internet is not "scarce": "The Internet can hardly be considered a ‘scarce’ expressive commodity. It provides relatively unlimited, low-cost capacity for communications of all kinds." Nor is it a "pervasive" medium under Pacifica: "The Internet is not as ‘invasive’ as radio or television."

Another argument sometimes raised by proponents of Internet speech regulation is even less supported by case lawâ€”that marginal speech on the Net is more dangerous than the same speech in print because it reaches larger audiences more easily. The proposition that controversial speech is acceptable so long as it only reaches a very few listeners flies directly in the face of the governing metaphor of First Amendment jurisprudence, as stated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas … the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Proponents of regulation, by contrast, argue that government must intervene whenever controversial speech is about to gain acceptance in the marketplace of ideas.

A closely related argument is that anonymous speech is more dangerous on the Internet because of the lack of gatekeepers, such as publishers, editors, or television producers who may know the identity of the anonymous speaker or filter out anonymous speech. However, this argument is highly antidemocratic and opposed to free markets, because it presupposes that anonymous speech is acceptable only if prescreened by an informed elite. No gatekeeper stood between McIntyre and her intended audience.

Since the Georgia decision, law enforcement authorities have continued to call for the elimination of anonymity on the Internet. On December 17, 1997, law enforcement officials from the U.S. and seven other industrialized countries issued a joint statement calling for "information and telecommunications systems" to be "designed to help prevent and detect network abuse." They said it would be "helpful to law enforcement if … packets [sent over the Internet] would transmit information reliably as to where they came from, including user and service provider." A few months later, FBI Director Louis Freeh testified to a Senate subcommittee: "It would be beneficial for law enforcement if Internet service providers [retain] subscriber information and records for screen names and associated … ‘IP addresses.’"

Preserve Anonymous Speech on the Internet

Laws requiring the disclosure of identity in cyberspace would necessitate far-reaching changes in Internet technology. Today, one can set up an Internet account without one’s full name being stored anywhere on the Internet. In fact, by setting up an account on a private network attached to the Internet, users may gain use of the Net without placing their identity on file anywhere at all. Anonymity and pseudonymity are built into the architecture of the Net. Legislators should be particularly wary of laws that require sweeping changes to communications technology in order to serve speech-restricting goals.

Anonymous and pseudonymous speech on the Internet forms a part of the rich tradition of such speech in other media, including print, and is entitled to the same First Amendment protections. Legislation against anonymity threatens to end that rich tradition, and should be opposed.

Federal Regulation of Internet Pornography Is Unconstitutional

6:00 pm

Reprinted, with permission, from "New Internet Censorship Law Will Fail," by Charles Levendosky, Casper Star-Tribune, January 17, 1999.

Charles Levendosky is the editor of the Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune and a noted commentator on First Amendment issues. In the following viewpoint, Levendosky argues that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA)â€”a law passed by Congress in late 1998 to prevent children from being exposed to pornography onlineâ€”is unconstitutional. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing any law censoring free speech, and yet, Levendosky maintains, this is exactly what COPA does. Furthermore, he contends that limiting the Internet only to material that does not offend children places an unacceptable limit on free speech. An injunction against the COPA was upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in June 2000.

As you read, consider the following questions:

What law regulating online pornography was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1997, according to the author?
What is the three-pronged test for whether Internet material is considered "harmful to minors," as cited by Levendosky?

Congress passed another unconstitutional piece of legislation in 1998 and attached it as a rider to the 40-pound, 4,000-page Omnibus Appropriations Bill. When President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, the Internet censorship act became law, tooâ€”bad law.

The Child Online Protection Act

Once again, members of Congress ignored the First Amendment’s proscription: "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech," and passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The law contains the same constitutional problems that were found in the Communications Decency Act, which was struck down by a unanimous vote of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997.

In the guise of protecting children from online smut, Congress created a new federal crime. Anyone who knowingly makes material that is "harmful to minors" available on the World Wide Web for commercial purposes can be fined $50,000 and spend up to six months in jailâ€”for each violation. Worse, a person can be fined $50,000 for each day that such material was made available.

According to COPA, "The term ‘minor’ means any person under 17 years of age." And the term "commercial purposes" is broad enough to include anyone using the Internet to gather or post information while conducting research that might lead to publication.

COPA defines "harmful to minors" as any material that is obscene, which is already illegal. However, "harmful to minors" also includes 1) material that the average person would find appeals to a minor’s prurient interest; 2) depicts sex acts in a manner that is patently offensive to minors; and 3) "taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors." All three conditions must be met before material can be considered "harmful to minors."

Those familiar with First Amendment case law will recognize this three-prong test as a variation on the Miller test from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. California (1973). The courts use the Miller test to determine whether a book, movie, video or other material is obscene.

The problem here, however, is that an adult must guess what is patently offensive to a minor and what would appeal to a minor’s prurient interest and what would lack serious literary value for a minor.

For most 15-year-old boys, almost any material that hints at sex, even bra ads in the Sears catalogue, would appeal to their prurient interest. And one could argue that it would be nearly impossible to find sexual material that would be patently offensive to boys that age.

Would special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s report, which details the sex acts that Clinton and Monica Lewinsky allegedly committed, be harmful to minors? Would Starr’s report have political value for a 16-year-old? Probably. But what about an 8-year-old?

Yet Congress considered the report important enough to post on the World Wide Webâ€”and rightfully so. Whether or not the public agrees with Starr’s allegations or the manner in which they were described, the report is politically and historically significant as part of the Republican Party’s attempt to remove a Democratic president from office.

The crux of the problem, thenâ€”should law-abiding citizens only post material on the Internet that would not offend or "harm" an 8-year-old?

When COPA Falls Short

And that is precisely where COPA falls short. Speech that is appropriate for adults, like a discussion of rapes in prison or genital mutilation, may not be appropriate for young childrenâ€”nevertheless, the Internet cannot be limited to what is only appropriate for them.

In the Supreme Court’s 1997 decision concerning the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: "In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve." The high court has made this exact point in numerous cases before 1997.

Acting Assistant Attorney General L. Anthony Sutin of the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to the House Committee on Commerce to spell out the department’s objections to COPA. Sutin wrote that attempting to enforce the provisions of the act would divert "investigative and prosecutorial resources that the Department currently invests in combating traffickers of hard-core pornography, in thwarting child predators, and in prosecuting large-scale and multi district commercial distributors of obscene materials." Sutin also noted that COPA has serious constitutional flaws.

It’s axiomatic that when a law attempts to restrict constitutionally protected speech based upon its content, the law violates the First Amendment. Somehow, members of Congress fail to understand this nation’s long and honorable freedom of speech tradition.

COPA sweeps too broadly and too vaguely to be constitutional. And it does not take the least restrictive means to achieve its worthy goal of protecting children from speech they might find shocking or disturbingâ€”and that is reason enough to toss this act into the junk-pile of history.

The act requires anyone who has a Web site that contains sexual material to verify the age of those who want to view the site. Age verification technologies are prohibitively expensive. The requirement would shut down many, if not most, educational Web sites.

The American Civil Liberties Union and 16 other plaintiffs challenged COPA the day after it was signed into law. Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. of the Federal District Court in Philadelphia granted a temporary restraining order that prohibits enforcement of the act until Feb. 1, 1999. The judge noted that it is likely the ACLU would prevail on the merits of some of their claims. [The Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction in June 2000.]

If this case reaches the Supreme Court, we can expect the law to be overturned with a finality that will strengthen free speech law as it applies to the Internet. And that result will be well worth the time and resources spent defending our First Amendment rights.

Beautiful People Have Advantages in the Workplace

5:00 pm

"An experienced hiring hand will ignore good looks, right? Not exactly."

Gordon L. Patzer is the founding director of the Appearance Research Institute in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined. In the following viewpoint excerpted from Looks, Patzer insists that physical attractiveness brings several advantages to the workplace. Patzer maintains that a job applicant’s good looks give him or her an edge over similarly and better-qualified candidates. In addition, he claims that attractive employees are paid more and hold higher positions than their plainer counterparts. And physical attractiveness benefits the bottom line, according to Patzer: companies with good-looking executives yield higher revenues than those with average-looking executives.

As you read, consider the following questions:

What studies does the author cite to support his claim that attractive, tall people receive higher pay?
How does Patzer respond to the assertion that better-looking executives apply to the most successful companies?
What is the one disadvantage of being an attractive employee, as stated by Patzer?

So you’re good-looking. Neonatal nurses nurtured you nonstop upon your arrival in this world. Your parents handed you everything a kid could want, and way more. Teachers from preschool and kindergarten all the way through college and grad school bent backward and forward to cut you every break possible. But now here you are, out of school and about to interview for your first job. So put all that stuff behind you and get real, young sir or miss, because this is the workplace. The gig. The grind. The rat race. Here in Nine-to-Five City, stockholders insist on profits and bosses expect you to work hard to inflate their bonuses. The bottom line is the bottom line. Do you really think that anybody, from the executive suite to the factory floor, gives a flying flip about how beautiful you are?

Well, yes, they do.

And quite a bit.

The fact is, if you are competing for a position against candidates who seem to possess exactly the same qualifications, but you are very attractive while the others are average or less in the PA [physical attractiveness] department, scientific studies say that you will get the job and they will not. Always? Well, if you’re bursting with PA but could use a manicure or even a minor makeover while the competition is well groomed but so-so looking, relaxâ€”you’ve still got the edge. Your good looks help most when you and your competitors are all otherwise run-of-the-mill candidates: If another applicant is exceptionally well qualified but you’re not, you may get a follow-up interview but probably not the job.

A Clear Linkage

The data and studies that form the scientific basis for this hire-the-handsome phenomenon have been available to personnel managers and corporate management for decades. Most human resource [HR] types are well aware that signing the guy with the toothpaste-ad smile or the gorgeous gal with the gams up to here isn’t solid management practice. An experienced hiring hand will ignore good looks, right?

Not exactly. Yes, the science is readily available and many seasoned hiring executives have actually read it. And no, it doesn’t seem to make much difference. Even though they believe that they are able to overlook an applicant’s PA, and even as they sincerely insist that they ignore such superficialities when making hiring decisions, many experienced managers will end up selecting an applicant with high PA whose job qualifications merely match or parallel those of a less attractive candidate. That’s because they think the person with high PA is actually better qualified or, if not, will nevertheless turn into a better employee.

And short men, along with all PA-challenged women, no matter how qualified, start any job interview with strikes against them, even when the hiring decision is made by a highly experienced manager or HR executive.

In 2000, British economist Barry Harper examined voluminous data relating to over 11,000 people born in Britain in 1958 and concluded that both men and women "assessed as unattractive or short experience a significant earnings penalty. Tall men receive a pay premium while obese women experience a pay penalty." Harper concluded that while there was evidence that short men and ugly women were on infrequent occasion less productive, "the bulk of the pay differential for appearance arises from employer discrimination."

Oh yes, that’s England! But here in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Would an American company really discriminate against a job applicant because he was short? Against a woman who was, shall we say, not so attractive?

Darn tootin’ they do, and a pair of Yank professors have the goods to prove it. Daniel M. Cable, a business professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Timothy A. Judge, professor of management at the University of Florida, studied data from 8,590 individuals in four different studies in both Great Britain and the United States. These studies followed thousands of participants from childhood to adulthood and examined many details of both their work and their personal lives.

Cable and Judge found no important difference between employees in the United Kingdom and the United States; in both countries their data document a clear linkage between physical height and career success. A person’s altitude, they learned, is a significant predictor of attitudes expressed toward them. Height flavors the way people dole out social esteem, invest in leadership, and rate performance, especially in men. …

If you are happily among the good-looking and have a job, over the long haulâ€”and most likely, over the short term, tooâ€”you will probably be paid more than average-looking counterparts and you will probably rise to a higher level in the organization than those with less PA. Studies show that physically attractive people tend to have better-paying jobs in higher-level positions than do their less attractive counterparts.

How much more? Evidence from studies conducted in the United States, Canada, and China in 1994 and 1999 suggests that highly attractive employees enjoy increased earnings of between 7.5 percent and 15 percent over their average-looking peers.

Why will a bottom-line business shell out more moola to those oozing PA if how they look doesn’t make any difference in how well they do their job? Is it merely discrimination against the PA impaired, or does hiring good-looking people increase productivity or somehow help to bring in more bucks?

Beauty Capital

To find out, economists Gerard A. Pfann of Holland’s University of the Maastricht; Jeff E. Biddle, Michigan State University; Daniel S. Hamermesh, University of Texas, Austin; and Ciska M. Bosman of Nice, France, conducted a study focused on the looks of executives in Holland’s busy and highly competitive advertising industry. Pfann and his colleagues collected data from hundreds of Dutch advertising firms to analyze the effect of employees’ attractiveness, or beauty, on their firms’ performance.

They began by assuming that all else being equal, in an industry where employees frequently interact with clients, firms with more attractive workers will face less customer discrimination and thus gain a competitive advantage. But to make a difference on the bottom line of a balance sheet, the beauty of employees must have some measurable positive effect, both on the agency’s production of revenue and on its profits after expenses. So, if an agency with beautiful workers pays them more than not-so-beautiful workers of equal ability, the company must somehow bring in not merely enough extra income to offset the expense of higher salaries and fringe benefits, but still more income to cover the expense of finding and hiring good-looking people and keeping other, less physically attractive workers motivatedâ€”and even more income to increase profit.

The income generated by employee labor is known as "quasi-rents," and according to economic theory, if quasi-rents increase with employee ability, profits may be increased by employing more able or productive workers.

In advertising firms, good working relationships among co-workers and with clients create a type of "human capital," and good ways to create these relationships lower the cost of acquiring this capital. So, more beautiful managers may find it easier to develop relationships with other employees and clients, generating higher earnings for themselves and higher quasi-rents for their company. All else being equal, firms with more beauty capital will produce more and obtain higher revenues. This was the theory that the data would either prove or debunk.

To begin their study, Pfann and his colleagues collected photos of the top management of 289 Dutch ad agencies, and then billing and earnings data from those agencies over a twelve-year span starting in 1984. Collectively, the agencies’ sales volume represented about 70 percent of all ad industry revenue in the Netherlandsâ€”a very sizable sample.

Executive beauty was assessed using 1,282 black-and-white photosâ€”head-and-shoulders shots from industry yearbooksâ€”an average of 2.71 pictures per firm. These photos were rated independently by a panel of two men and one woman aged 40 or older, and by a second panel of two men and one woman aged 39 or younger. (The makeup of these panels reflected the age-sex distribution of the ad agencies’ clientele.) The people in the photos were rated on a five-point scale, where 5 was "strikingly handsome or beautiful" and 1 was "homely."

The panel rated the average ad-agency manager at 2.80, or just below average in PA. And, as expected, executive beauty had a positive effect on revenue. After taking into account such factors as the size and location of the agency and its experience in the industry, whether small or large, all but a few agencies with better-looking executives reported significantly higher revenue.

Beauty Brings Success

But hold on! Does beauty really bring success? What if it’s the other way aroundâ€”success attracts beauty? What if better-looking executives are attracted to join successful agencies because these firms bring in more revenue? By tracking employment records, Pfann and his colleagues found no evidence to support this notion: Previously successful firms did not attract better-looking executives.

In fact, the Dutch study showed that beauty is highly productive. Among all firms sampled, those with better-looking executives brought in an average of 120,000 guilders more per year in billing revenue. And aside from a handful of tiny agencies operating in Holland’s most competitive business region, known as the Randstad, firms boasting better-looking management averaged an extra 188,000 guilders per year in revenue. (The study identified several very small firms, all operating in Holland’s most competitive advertising environment, that lacked the financial resources or management ability to capitalize on having a few executives with higher-than-average PA.)

And how much better looking were the men and women who run top-earning firms than those of the average Dutch agency manager? Pfann and friends calculated that the most successful firms employed managers whose beauty was greater than that of ninety out of every hundred Dutch ad executives.

And now to the bottom line. What was the return on this investment of beauty capital? By massaging their Dutch data and estimating individual executive salaries based on industry data, Pfann calculated that good-looking execs created significantly more income from quasi-rents than they cost their companies in higher wages. Even though their own salaries substantially exceeded industry averages, their agencies earned even more. "Beauty capital yields returns to both workers and firms," concluded Pfann and his colleagues. …

A Higher Penalty

While PA in business can spell "personal asset" to those who have it, those high in PA must also shoulder the burden of their bosses’ higher expectations or jealousyâ€”and when the boss is frustrated or disappointed, they pay a higher penalty for personal indiscretions than their more ordinary-looking colleagues.

This was the conclusion of a 2002 study by a psychology professor and a pair of undergraduate students at North Central College, in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. They assembled a group of ninety-eight students, including thirty-six MBA [master of business administration] candidates, and asked them to act as "managers" in evaluating the actions of "employees" who violated a company policy against using company computers to access the Internet to shop.

Based on the data, Professor Karl Kelley and students Lori Nita and Brittain Bandura were able to observe how a manager’s decision to punish an employee policy violator was affected by the employee’s gender and PA. Their data revealed that attractive females were punished most harshly and attractive males suffered the least severe consequences. When it came to employees with low PA, however, the violator’s gender made no difference.

What’s going on here? Why would managers come down harder on an attractive woman than an ordinary-looking one who had committed the same offense? Probably because business has a sort of love-hate relationship with beauty. Driven by ideals of fairness, or maybe envy, ill will can smolder against coworkers thought to have attained employment unjustly. Better-looking females are known particularly to be the target of such speculations. Managers are not insensitive to these dynamics and, to avoid accusations about preferential treatment, they can feel compelled to mete out stronger disciplinary action when a presumably preferred employee violates company rules. Their doing so is backhanded recognition that their PA opens many doors that remain closed to more average-looking people. Some managers therefore tend to hold their better-looking employees, whom they suspect have always gotten the breaks, more accountable for behaviors that have negative effects on the organization. …

So you’re good-looking, and just as your exceptional looks have opened many doors for you, you get this jobâ€”even though you were no better prepared for it than other candidates. If you keep your new job, you can expect a bigger salary and faster promotions than the average worker here. If you hope one day to rise to the top of your new company, you’ve got a good shotâ€”but if you screw up, you can also expect to be treated more harshly than your fellow employees.

And as you get older, you will have to work harder and harder to hang on to your looks. So good luck.

Individuals’ Ability to Communicate Anonymously Via the Internet Is Threatened

The Rich Tradition of Anonymous Speech

Protected by the First Amendment

Implications for the Internet

Preserve Anonymous Speech on the Internet

FURTHER READINGS

Federal Regulation of Internet Pornography Is Unconstitutional

The Child Online Protection Act

When COPA Falls Short

FURTHER READINGS

Beautiful People Have Advantages in the Workplace

A Clear Linkage

Beauty Capital

Beauty Brings Success

A Higher Penalty

FURTHER READINGS

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