Yes, Larry, you may speak now.

You can probably guess how the star of a documentary called The Right To Be Left Alone feels about the arguments over using pseudonyms online, especially since many of his customers may prefer some measure of privacy when receiving their monthly shipment. But that doesn't make Larry Flynt's terse foray into the online identity debate, which appeared today on the Huffington Post, any less amusing:

"For the average American citizen, the notion of privacy is extinct. Any information you put out into cyberspace could come back to bite you in the ass. Retail stores sell your purchase history to third parties without your consent. Social media sites and search engines act as data mines, storing information that could later be accessed by the government and used against you in court.

The Feds have no problem letting companies collect and exploit our personal information because it makes running a surveillance state that much easier to do. Whenever the government wants to find out what weird shit you're up to on the Internet, guess what ­they're going to find out? You can thank Google, Facebook, Walmart and all the other megacorps for that.

Be alert: Big Brother is watching you."

We're just guessing here, but Mr. Flynt probably knows from "weird shit on the Internet."