AOL Loses Privacy Appeal

robkill writes "The Virgina Supreme Court ruled against AOL in its appeal, on First Amendment grounds, to throw out a subpeona by Nam Tai Electronics seeking the identity of an anonymous AOL user who posted 'false and defamatory' messages on a message board. Details can be found in the News.com article."

Comments

Obviously IANAL

[(trb001)]

The article doesn't mention exactly where, other than in a newsgroup, the subject was saying derrogatory things about Nam Tai, but when ARE you allowed to bash a company? Slashdot is, effectively, a newsgroup...we bash MS all the time here, along with tens of other companies. When does free speech cross that (hazy, at best) line into libel?

This sounds pretty preposterous to me...free speech ought to be free, if a company's product and good name can't stand up to people criticizing it, they probably shouldn't be in business. Having said that, I'm going to go back into my utopian cave now...

--trb

Re:Obviously IANAL

[ctr2sprt]

The problem here is that people, for the most part, trust other people. Given the absence of first-hand information, we're likely to believe what other people tell us. How many times have you related as true something that you only heard indirectly from someone else? And how many times have you later turned out to be wrong?

Libel is a realization that when you get enough people together in a public forum, they will all reinforce the negative aspects of something. Slashdot is a pretty great example of this. It starts with a post that vaguely paints MS in a negative light. A bunch of people jump on the bandwagon about how terrible MS is. To further their cases, they produce a bunch of misleading, confusing, or simply false examples as "proof." Other readers see 50 people saying the same thing and are strongly inclined to believe it. The next time a vaguely anti-MS post comes up, those other readers themselves start posting the misleading information as truth.

Libel laws are a good thing, at least in principle, because they make sure that people in positions of authority (like the press) make at least an extremely basic information to back up their claims. The /. readership is, by and large, pretty smart, and if we get duped into believe horseshit just because a lot of people are saying it, what do you think would happen if reporters did the same thing all the time?

(Obviously, "libel" still happens, but think how bad it would be if you couldn't sue people over it.)

Re:can Nam Tai actually do this?

[Unordained]

as we're reminded all the way through college by our profs. right before a paper is due ... don't believe anything and everything you find on the internet, just because it's there. in the same way, if you post comments about a company defrauding its customers without posting your background information on the claim, those reading it should know better than to believe you. that's always been the case -- yes, we're hurt when someone lies. but when they don't provide much info, shouldn't we also be responsible for looking into the issue? the main reason we can at all sue people for outrageous claims is that if done correctly, you can convince people and get a mob going in no time. witch hunts? burning at the stake? passionate messages may overrule any insight people have into your lies. but really ... is that not the listener's fault?

Re:Dunno if this is related

[dirk]

Even in that case, where (if?) the person was making a deliberate attempt to undermine the company using false information, I still see no reason why Yahoo, AOL, or any other middle-man company should be at all obligated to get involved.

Because they are the only people who have the information. If someone commits a crime and then hides in my house, I cannot say that they aren't there, just because I don't want to be involved. they are not asking AOL to get involved directly, but to reveal information about the people who may have committed libel. If someone has broken the law (or whatever subsection of the justice system libel falls under, probably torts), you are responsible to not hide information requested by the court about them.