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Texas Judge Orders Identification of Topix Trolls
eldavojohn writes "Ars Technica has a story on a Texas judge who has ordered Topix.com to hand over the identifying details of 178 trolls that allegedly made 'perverted, sick, vile, inhumane accusations' about Mark & Rhonda Lesher. Mark Lesher was accused of sexually assaulting an unidentified former client (and subsequently found not guilty) which prompted the not so understanding discussions on Topix. Topix has until March 6 to give up the information. Let's hope the Leshers don't visit Slashdot!"
...they never logged identifying details?
Odds are good that the company will turn over the records, and nothing will come of it after that. Can you imagine them going after 170 people at once? I can't, unless they are the RIAA.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Seems like they're following the correct procedure here. They've identified specific posts, shown them to a judge, had the judge determine that they have a cause of action based on those specific posts, and now are proceeding to ask for the identities of the people who made those posts so they can proceed with legal action. That's in contrast to other cases where the demand is a blanket demand not based on showing that specific posts are actionable.
The right to state your views anonymously does not extend to being a shield against liability if your statements are found to be actionable.
And if they were the RIAA, it would magically become 17 000 people.
Look up the word "defamation". There is actually something of a right not to be talked badly about in some very specific cases.
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Although, from what little I know of the situation, I disagree with the assertion that the judge is a cad. At face value it looks like he is doing the correct thing. He was presented with specific posts that are legally actionable and he is continuing the action on those posts.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
so if it's not in the Bill of Rights then you aren't allowed to sue over it? hey, everybody, the U.S. legal system has been simplified, and now all laws have been reduced to only what is in the Bill of Rights. Free speech is only free up to a point. Not everything that comes out of your mouth (nor, apparently, your keyboard) is protected by this right.
It seems like this kind of legal issue is popping up in the news more and more. With the increased media coverage of *channers trolling people, the "cyberbullying" scares of the past 10 years or so, and things like the Megan Meier case, libel and other forms of online harassment are becoming more of an issue.
Maybe it's just me, but I see parallels between this issue and that of copyright. Both are laws designed long ago, before the semi-anonymous mass-communication that is the internet, and both are facing the fact that this new technology challenges the very foundation of these laws.
Either way, defamation isn't a criminal statute. Nobody is going to be put in jail for this, either way.
On the other hand, I've been defamed recently, and was incapable of taking legal action because the person in question isn't likely to be believed, thus eliminating any ability to prove liability.
I don't think anonymous posters to a website would meet the standard of believability, and thus would be 'libel proof'.
That said, I lie every time I join a forum. "Oh sure, my name is Bob Dylan, and I'm from Beverly Hills, California -- Zip Code 90210!"
Sue away, in that case. I'm sure Bob will appreciate it.
It's been a long time.
Well the right to free speech isn't unlimited according to current law. There are laws regarding defamation/libel/slander, for example, that could leave you open to a civil case. In this case, it's not really the government itself silencing you, but the government handling a dispute between two private parties.
But also, there are rules against "speech" that recklessly endangers others, the classic example being yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Also, encouraging others to commit a crime or helping to plan a crime is not protected as "free speech". Conspiracy to commit murder, for example, is a very serious crime even though the action may have only been "speech".
Umm, it's not slanderous if it's true. And it may be actionable of you don't tell your partner. Oh, wait! This is /.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
God forbid this judge actually visit part of the internet... I shudder to think what would happen if he saw 4chan... although it would be pretty funny. "Judge orders anonymous to turn itself in."
"Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
First, it wouldn't be slander, it would be libel. Slander is spoken. Libel is written.
Second, it's not libel (or slander, for that matter) if the person you're attempting to libel (or slander) has not actually been identified. Since you posted anonymously and referred to the object of your libel as simply "I", no one has any way of knowing who you're talking about, and therefore your reputation has not been damaged (which is a requirement for it to be libel or slander).
Third, as someone else pointed out, it's not libel (or slander) if it's true.
Sigh.
The ability to sue for libel, slander and general defamation does not infringe the right to free speech, because it does not restrict speech. It just does what most civil law is intended to do: hold people accountable for harm they cause.
To see an example, suppose you're a programmer looking for a job, and a company is about to hire you. But then someone at the company reads a post I've written about you on the Internet where I make (false) claims that you don't know anything about programming, that you were incompetent and cost my company lots of money, etc., and as a result they decide not to hire you. My post has caused actual harm to you (loss of a job opportunity), and you could bring a lawsuit against me to recover damages. Not a lawsuit forbidding me to write things, or forbidding me to say what's on my mind, but simply to compensate you for the harm my words caused. This is really no different from, say, being forced to pay to replace a window if I throw a rock through it.
And that distinction -- between regulating the act of speech, and holding people accountable for the consequences of the action -- is what makes all the Constitutional difference (a law forbidding you to speak would be unconstitutional -- the term is "prior restraint"). In other words, it's the difference between saying, before the fact, "you aren't allowed to do that" and saying, after the fact, "you must make amends for what you did". The former, when speech is involved, is called prior restraint and there are very few cases in which it's allowed. The latter is simply called a civil suit, and is as common as weeds.
...we're going to have to take back everything we've said about CowboyNeal?
Have gnu, will travel.
Free speech doesn't give unlimited protection to libel.
Ars Technica (TFA) claims that the judge's order ignores previous rulings, yet the ones it cites are not on point. They involve politicians and business executives.
These involve purported libel of private figures acquitted of a crime.
First, it wouldn't be slander, it would be libel. Slander is spoken. Libel is written.
I've always thought that was a silly distinction for the law to make. The words are the problem, not the medium. What difference does it make whether it was spoken or written?
And what happens if I slander someone, and someone else writes it down? Am I guilty of libel now that my statements have been committed to paper?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
At one point in time, Texas was primarily filled with Texans. After the oil boom in the 80s and the rise of the Sun Belt, tons upon tons upon tons of people relocated to Texas. They didn't care a fig for how Texans did things in the past, and immediately began changing things to suit themselves. Prior to this, Texas and the United States sort of held each other at arm's length, which suited both parties.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Texas likes to protect its citizens from the tyranny of federal government so that the tyranny of state government has someone left to act on.
It is important to note that a decision that appears bad or stupid may well result from a perfectly smart and competent judge correctly interpreting a bad or stupid law.
When a judge says the law says something you don't like, don't blame the judge unless you really think the law says something different than they do. Cases where there is good reason to disagree about what the law says are not nearly so common as cases where the law clearly and unarguably says something dumb.
I want to see if the secret B.O.R. gives you the right to not be made to feel bad by someones free speech.
You misunderstand both the Bill of Rights and Free Speech.
First: The Bill of Rights is a set of limits on government and its officials, not on other people. (And it solely recognizes preexisting rights and warns the government to not to try to take them away, rather than creating them.)
Second: The right to free speech that the Bill of Rights recognizes is a right to not be blocked in advance, not a right to be immune from a claim for restitution for any damages or losses to others that your speech caused.
Just as the right to bear arms isn't a right to shoot innocent parties without expectation of punishment and the right to free exercise of religion isn't a right to perform human sacrifice of unwilling victims, the right to free speech isn't a right to destroy someone else's valuable reputation with lies without having to pay him for the damage you caused.
(It IS a right to destroy his valuable but UNEARNED reputation with TRUTH. In the United States truth is an absolute defense against claims of defamation. But you'd better be prepared to back up your claims - in a civil court, where the standard is "preponderance of evidence", not "beyond reasonable doubt".)
(And the obligatory IANAL.)
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God forbid this judge actually visit part of the internet
Excessively bad behavior by a large (or active) enough minority will destroy a free and civil society by causing "everyone else" to defend themselves by enacting more and more laws to try and tamp down such disruptive behavior.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The difference is that the spoken word (unless recorded) is gone once it leaves your mouth, but something on paper (or the internet) sticks around.
I find it ironic that none of the responses to this article, as of 3:25pm on Feb 11, 2009 have been marked as trolls. Nay, even the usual troll posts haven't shown up yet...a first in /. history! I shall mark this day on my calendar.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
The broader term is defamation.
When it was originally developed the distinction between the form probably made more sense. Because there was no other, more practical way to mechanically record and reproduce the spoken word, libelous material was naturally easier to distribute than slander.
Several hundred years later, not so much.
You are absolutely free to voice or write an opinion. You are even absolutely free to voice or write an absolute falsehood. But, if you write a falsehood that harms another person, you are responsible for that harm; that is what slander/libel laws are about.
Imagine that there was an amendment that says "Americans have the right to throw bricks". If you throw a brick through some one's window, you'll still have to pay for it. If you throw a brick at some one's head and kill them, you will be charged with manslaughter.
Just because you can throw bricks, doesn't mean you can cause harm to others and escape punishment. Just because you have free speech doesn't mean you can say anything you want and avoid the consequences.
In fact, in Australia we formally abolished the distinction several years ago for that exact reason.
Read Pynchon.
You seem to be hung up on a misunderstanding: rape is a crime, and is handled by a criminal process whereby a government official prosecutes you and, if convicted, you receive a sentence from the government as punishment. Defamation (which includes libel, slander, etc.), on the other hand (in this type of case, and in the US), is not a crime. The government does not prosecute people for it, and does not punish people for it. It's a tort, and is handled by a civil process; effectively, the government-run court acts as a sort of mediator/enforcer in a disagreement between individuals or corporations. A tort (the word comes to us from the French for "wrong") is something you shouldn't have done (whether deliberately or accidentally) and which caused some actual harm to a person or actual damage to someone's property (although, importantly, not a breach of contract -- that's handled by a separate area of law), and the result of a successful lawsuit over a tort is payment of damages or some other form of restitution.
Which brings me back once again to the key difference: defamation laws do not restrict or prevent or outlaw any type of speech. They simply provide people with a way to be compensated for harm done to them.
In the case of defamation, generally it is asserted that a person's reputation has been harmed by a particular statement, and the standard of proof for the harm varies with the type of statement. Some statements -- for example, false assertions that someone has committed a serious crime -- are (in most US states) automatically considered harmful enough to be defamation, but other statements require a description of the alleged harm and proof that the harm actually occurred as a result of the statement. Also, (again, in the US) a defamation suit must generally prove that the statements either were made with intent to cause harm, or were made with negligent disregard for their truth (this provision and several others in US defamation law, by the way, exist precisely because of the First Amendment, in order to prevent defamation suits from having an improperly chilling effect on the genuine expression of opinion).
So this isn't really a candidate for a slippery slope argument; the body of law around defamation is literally thousands of years old, and has been refined and clarified over that time to ensure that it's fair and equitable to both sides, with a history of court rulings balancing the need to redress harm against the need to protect free speech. Unfortunately, it's just not something the average person ever really learns about...
So Texas libel laws were possibly violated. But what if the person typing into the blog lives in and typed the words in question in from another state where it isn't libel and online anonymous speech is protected? That's the first question I'd like answered.
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