Slashdot Mirror
The CDA Is Dead, But States Are Trying To Revive It
oliphaunt writes "This week at The Legality, Tracy Frazier has an article discussing the damage that can be done by anonymous online comments. While regulars here are familiar with infamous bits of Net censorship like the Fishman Affidavit fiasco, and everyone has been an anonymous coward at least once or twice, some of you may not know about the conflict between Heide Iravani and AutoAdmit.com. Heide eventually filed a lawsuit because the first result for a Google search on her name brought up anonymous comments on AutoAdmit that accused her of carrying an STD and sleeping her way to the top of her class. The Communications Decency Act was supposed to prevent this kind of thing, but an injunction prevented it from ever being enforced and eventually the Supreme Court killed it. Should the law be changed?" The article links to a proposal from last summer in the New Jersey legislature that would institute a DMCA-like takedown regime for allegedly defamatory content posted on a Web site, and would allow aggrieved parties to demand the identity of anonymous posters without a subpoena. No indication of how that proposal fared. Also linked is a recent North Carolina proposal that would criminalize the act of defaming someone using an electronic medium. This proposal shields Web sites from liability and explicitly does not apply to anonymous speech.
I didn't realise Heide Iravani might have had an STD until she fought so hard to stop people talking about it.
Considering something like 70% of people carry HPV the odds are in your favour that you're telling the truth whenever you say someone has an STD.
Yeah, pretty much this exactly.
Done properly (use TOR, pick "targets" entirely at random, MASSIVE number of "targets" (probably at minimum 10k or so) and make it pretty much impossible to track a real person to blame) and you could get this to be a large enough noise source that corporations couldn't rely on internet searches for employee information any more.
Hmmm... Might want to modify that random - make sure about 25-50% of mid and upper level executives of all companies in the fortune 1k are included.
Who wants to get the /b/tards started on this?
And opinion should be neither. ( which is where this is headed ultimately, to restrict you from expressing your opinion, unless its an 'approved' opinion )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In the real world, if I were to post anonymously that Zero_DGZ is a pedophile who visits Thailand to frequent child brothels, there are other anonymous idiots who would read this and post it as news. Once a few hundred people posted this juicy bit of information, people would cease to note it was anonymous and think "Google says lots of people think that...", and before long you would get a visit from the FBI.
It may be that anonymous statements of opinion, as in "I think ZeroDgZ is sociopathic", should be protected, but statements presented as facts that are actually lies should not. Using anonymity to protect against suit for libel should also not be protected (it is illegal in many countries as regards print media at least).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Yes I have been a victim of this. Some moron who shares my name is a moderately infamous white supremacist.
Needless to say he has a prominent wikipedia and google presence.
I have actually lost business due to this, as someone looked him up, thought it was about me, and wrote smearing emails about me to my client. I cleared it up with the client but the FUD damaged the relationship and no further business ensued. And who knows, maybe it has cost me job interviews as well.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as they say.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?