If it's against the law, report it to the police; Don't take the law into your own hands. It makes you no better than what you're trying to expunge.

I don't think we have to behave positively towards all behavior that falls short of illegality. In Violentacrez's case, he was long-term harassing people, posting creepy photos without their consent, etc. It may not have risen to the level of a crime, but I don't see any reason people shouldn't strongly criticize his behavior, including criticizing him by his real name, if they can discover that name through legal means. Why should him posting sexualized photos of people (including kids) without their consent be tolerated, but suddenly one violates some threshold of civility to say: "I've discovered that the guy posting these photos is Michael Brutsch, and I would like him to stop."

I'm not defending anyone.. other than Voltaire's quote.

I don't really have an opinion on the situation at reddit.. I was just mentioning it as a related current topic.

I guess my point was that if you really take a hardline free-speech view seriously, as in the (attributed) Voltaire quote, then "doxxing" people etc. also has to be defended, as long as there wasn't a crime committed to obtain the information—because the Gawker article is just more speech, after all. It's speech that can have a negative effect on a person, but then so were the original postings he was being criticized for. I do think both violate some kind of a right to privacy, but I'm not really comfortable with unilateral disarmament, so to speak. I would be interested in some kind of broader privacy norm, if something coherent could be defined.