What would have happened to the man who was jailed over twitter comments had he set up account in other name?

[Richard]

Surely this is open to abuse.
What's to stop someone setting up an account with someone else's name just to get them into trouble.

I'm not a twitter user so not sure of the ins and outs

[cathrl69]

Exactly the same as happened to him as-is.

Go look up "IP address."

[Jakab Ubul]

There are technical means to retrieve information about someone who publishes something on a website. (For example, the operators of Twitter can know the IP address of the source of any tweet.) And to counter that, there are also means to evade such identification. (There are services to mask your IP address.) Usernames are not an efficient way to mask one's identity. Nor are they likely to be used in a criminal investigation/lawsuit. Surely anyone can register on a message board as Barack Obama, and nobody should think for a second that it's his real name.

[punywish661]

The IP address is the key to identifying someone but people with a degree technical know how can easily get round that.