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Normally, organizations accept anonymous donations from people because of modesty or privacy -- the donors don't want their name on the wall or in the press. Th

• HillaryBriss 7y ago
  right. the veil of anonymity was torn apart in this case. this doesn't seem like a robust test case for Lessig's theory of anonymity.
  • tlb 7y ago
    I think no theory of anonymity works. A villain isn't going to keep their pinky-promise to not tell everyone that your prestigious institution took their money.
    • amluto 7y ago
      It’s not particularly difficult to make a donation anonymous in a way that the recipient genuinely doesn’t know who made the donation. Just have a neutral third party handle it. This could be a donor advised fund or a trustee, for example. I suspect this isn’t particularly rare.
      • nardi 7y ago
        But then the donor tells the recipient that they are the ones who donated all of that money. And so they get all of the benefits anyway.
        • amluto 7y ago
          I just gave you $10M. Can I have a private dinner? Do you believe me? If an anonymous donation is done with some degree of care, you have no way to verify my claim.
          • evancox100 7y ago
            If a $10M anonymous donation had just showed up in my account and I hadn't told anyone, then yes I would be inclined to believe you.
            • amluto 7y ago
              That would be part of handling anonymous donations sensibly. The transaction should be between the development office and whatever trustee or foundation gives the gift. The ultimate beneficiary shouldn’t be notified of the donation until, say, the end of the fiscal year, at which point all anonymous donations are aggregated.
  • matthewdgreen 7y ago
    Lessig's theory of anonymous donations seems to have been carefully developed for the sole purpose of exonerating Ito, who is Lessig's friend. It's not like there's some new revelation that's come out since Lessig wrote his piece.
• partialrecall 7y ago
  Right, his identity may have been concealed from MIT's accounting department, but when it came to getting personal/social access to MIT professors, it's clear people were aware he was contributing to their program.
• Alex3917 7y ago
  > Lessig's utilitarian calculus doesn't convince me it's OK to take money anonymously from villains. Meh. It's not OK, but it's not that bad either. Even if what Ito did was wrong, which at least with hindsight it clearly was, the guy is still a hero. Even the allegations about him using his position to raise LP money for his fund is somewhat dubious, given that he's much more famous for being a venture capitalist than he is for running the media lab; it's literally why he was hired for that job in the first place. It was bad judgment, and maybe he deserved to get fired for it, but as scandals go it's fairly benign.
  • kyledrake 7y ago
    I would love to hear your perspective on why Joi Ito is a hero.
    • Alex3917 7y ago
      He was an early investor in Six Apart and Technorati, was one of the top 100 bloggers, and was one of the first to clearly articulate the ability of the Internet to change society. He was also on the board of Creative Commons, ICANN, Mozilla, etc. Also his sister is one of the top Internet researchers, and iirc she has said that she became interested in the field because of his early entrepreneurial career.
      • RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
        >and was one of the first to clearly articulate the ability of the Internet to change society. A few years ago, it would have been considered a given that the Internet’s ability to change society was a good thing. I don’t think people take that position as unequivocally as before. So in judging Ito, you have “Hypes the Internet” vs “helps normalize the reputation a child rapist” I am not so sure that the good outweighs the bad
      • dirtybird04 7y ago
        These are nice achievements. Impressive, even. But that's a very low bar for a "hero" imo.
• xiaolingxiao 7y ago
  Concur with this. According to friends who works in the university's development department, anonymous donations are often used by people whose kids will attend , or are attending the university. So it's the parents' way of being discrete w/o outing their kids as "undeserving".