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Right to Post Anonymously Protected

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the chalk-one-up-for-the-good-guys dept.

JudTaylor writes " ZDNet has an article decribing a decision by a Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge allowing Yahoo to protect the privacy of posters to message boards. Lee Tien, an white hat attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, stated "This is a great victory for anonymous speech. I believe Judge Cabrinha's ruling will signal to other companies that judges will not permit corporate executives to abuse the courts in ferreting out their critics." Critics of Pre-Paid Legal Services had posted messages disparaging the company on Yahoo boards. Representatives of the company had no immediate comment." I'm glad to see a decision for freedome can still happen in this country.

5 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. You Know, Taco... by Cheshire+Cat · · Score: 5, Funny
    I'm glad to see a decision for freedome can still happen in this country.

    The courts have also ruled dictionaries and spell-checkers are completely legal, Taco. :)

    --

    Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
    1. Re:You Know, Taco... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny

      In Santa Clara did a Superior Court Judge a stately Free Dome decree:
      Upon Yahoo, the sacred message board, ran
      Where posting disparaging remarks anonymously one can
      A great victory, proclaimed Tien, Lee

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. I Can See It Now... by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 5, Funny
    New fine print on corproate sponsored boards:

    "Note: This is not a message board."

  3. In other California legal news... by Guppy06 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    California's Supreme Court ruled that schools are allowed stop, question, and search students without reasonable suspicion.

    http://www.cnn.com/2001/fyi/teachers.ednews/08/14/ studentrights.ap/index.html

    Quoth the court: "Just don't abuse it too much."

    So I guess this kinda cancels out that "victory for freedom" you mentioned.

  4. Re:Insider trading... by Jerf · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I think (hope?) you're defending against a false belief. The point that I've yet to see mentioned in any postings is that an increasing number of companies are filing lawsuits for the sole purpose of "unmasking" an anonymous spokesperson, then dropping the suit as soon as they accomplish that, often with the intent of following up on the issue themselves. For instance, your company might have chosen to do internal discipline without regards to the law.

    Your example is bad for this purpose, because a real, honest-to-goodness crime is being committed; your company never considered merely unmasking the suspect and internally disciplining them. But there are other cases that have occurred. Suppose someone was merely badmouthing the company, in such a way that they clearly worked inside the company. Companies have been bringing frivolous slander lawsuits against "John Doe"s, finding out who "John Doe" is, then dropping the suit and pursuing internal discipline against the now-unmasked employee. These disciplines are often on the wrong side of legal.

    Nobody with any sense is supporting the idea that anonymity is some sort of ultimate goal; instead, people like me recognize that this abuse of the law system is dangerous, and insist that the courts establish that some crime was committed before issuing the unmasking order. Normal procedure up to this point was to unmask before establishing the existence of a crime, and it is this fact that people have been abusing. If a crime is committed, unmask away! But if the statements ticking off the company aren't truly illegal, then they have no particular right to unmask these people, and it is this anonymous speech we support: legal anonymous speech.

    Thus, as far as people like me are concerned, your company acted perfectly ethically (as well as legally). You established the existence of a crime (and a rather serious one at that; insider trading seems harmless (due to its abstractness) in some ways but it truly is a victim-crime), then pushed a bit (legally) to discover who was doing it. As far as I'm concerned, if you had to go to court to get that information, more power to you!

    I run a weblog tracking this sort of stuff and this story isn't actually interesting enough for me to run; this kind of decision is actually fairly common at this point. The judicial system has "seen the light" of this argument and basically agrees, unless you get unlucky and get a bad judge.