Judge Rules To Reveal Anonymous Blogger's Identity Over Insults
Several readers have written to tell us of a ruling in the New York Supreme Court which will allow model Liskula Cohen to find out the identity of an anonymous blogger who posted some of her photos with captions including the words "psychotic," "skank," and "ho." The site was part of Blogger.com, and Google has already complied with a request for the author's IP address and email. "[Cohen's attorney] said that once his legal team tracks the e-mail address to a name, the next step will be to sue Cohen's detractor for defamation. He said he suspected the creator of the blog is an acquaintance of Cohen. The blog has not been operational for months. The unidentified creator of the blog was represented in court by an attorney, Anne Salisbury, who said her client voluntarily took the blog down when Cohen initiated legal action against it. ... the judge quoted a Virginia court that ruled in a similar case that nameless online taunters should be held accountable when their derision crosses a line. 'The protection of the right to communicate anonymously must be balanced against the need to assure that those persons who choose to abuse the opportunities presented by this medium can be made to answer for such transgressions.'"There are quite a few stories about this sort of thing online. If you go too far your anonymity will not protect you. Some people will get fed up enough to sue.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/08/...y-Over-Insults
Let that be a lesson to anyone who uses a website to call people etc, you can be traced and you can be sued and maybe worse
Excellent article. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt goes both ways.. they look at it as a form of public slander. That said, there have been bloggers who've had their sources protected by journalism laws.. we'll just have to see what happens when they finally figure out how to define how bloggers fit into the law.
ReplyDelete