alias in phone book

I have recently been participating in a thread concerning anonymity and 
pseudonymity on the Internet.  Somebody was complaining about trying to 
find somebody and they were logged in with an uncorrelatable alias. 
(Fishman = Don Johnson????)  The person was asking for a rule that 
everyone log in with an alias that DIRECTLY correlated them with their 
"real world" (relative term) pseudo.  Yuch!!!!! 

What I was wondering was if any of you law hacks out there new anything 
about the following comment regarding phone books

A professor of communications has brought up the fact that it is illegal 
to use a pseudo in the white pages of the phone book.  Is this the case?
Help!!!!


lake@uenics.evansville.edu
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>A professor of communications has brought up the fact that it is illegal 
>to use a pseudo in the white pages of the phone book.  Is this the case?

I would suggest first, to ask this professor to make a legal citation,
and if one is not forthcoming, to ask for a retraction of the claim.

Eric

Eric Hughes says:
> >A professor of communications has brought up the fact that it is illegal 
> >to use a pseudo in the white pages of the phone book.  Is this the case?
> 
> I would suggest first, to ask this professor to make a legal citation,
> and if one is not forthcoming, to ask for a retraction of the claim.

A friend of mine who's a lawyer has a subtle pseudo in the phone book
because he doesn't want to be harrassed at home by clients. (Basically
he's listed under a deliberate misspelling of his name.) The phone
company cheerfully listed him under a different name than the one on
his bill. The "professor" in question is likely very very wrong.

Perry

>The phone
>company cheerfully listed him under a different name than the one on
>his bill.

As long as we're telling funny phone name stories, I had a friend who
had not only an "unlisted" number, but even if you knew the fake name,
it was also unqueryable.

	Fokkersef, Hugo

A friend of his was trying to get in touch with him from another city
and only knew the alias.  The first time he asked the information
operator for the number for "Hugo Fokkersef", he got hung up on.
After the third hang-up, he gave up.

Eric

It should be also noted, that my ex-wife had her name listed in the phone 
book as being Voom VaVa.

C'punks,

On Tue, 12 Apr 1994, Adam Lake wrote:

> . . .
> 
> A professor of communications has brought up the fact that it is illegal 
> to use a pseudo in the white pages of the phone book.  Is this the case?
> Help!!!!

To the best of my knowledge, your professor is full of it.  For years, I 
was listed in the White Pages as "TANSTAFFL."  The phone company put up a 
fuss at first, but I bullied them into it.

In the same White Pages a gay bartender in San Francisco's Castro 
district used the name, Kate Forna, which in telephone order is: 

			Forna, Kate

Works for me.

 S a n d y