Hacker News Reader

Given that aliases are legal and not in and of themselves considered fraudulent in most of the world, the requirement to use a 'real name' for online services seems to have no real legal basis anyway.

View on HN

It's a private, voluntary, non-essential service. They can do what they want, short of protected class discrimination.

They can do what they want within the law, and there is AFAIK a common law right to use aliases.

In other words, your name is what you agree to go by.

Also, you are not contractually bound by anyone to go by your given name, as you were not old enough to contractually agree to it when your name was given.

And they can allow or disallow anyone they want. It's their business.

Yes, but if they give you a contract that says that you have to provide them with your birth name to use their service, then that part of the contract just doesn't count either way in those territories where it has no legal basis.

So in that situation, if you give an alias and you click agree to their contract, you would still not be in breach of contract.

They can always remove your account anyway of course.

Legal basis? Surely its purely a data-mining basis?

We'll all be skeptical when Google try and tell us anything else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com