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Model Drops Lawsuit After Outing Anonymous Blogger
JumperCable writes "The NY Daily News is reporting that model Liskula Cohen, who was suing the 'Skanks of NYC' blogger for defamation, is dropping the lawsuit now that she has outed the anonymous blogger, who is a Fashion Institute of Technology student named Rosemary Port. This brings up the question of potential abuse of the legal system to 'out' anonymous authors even if there is no intention actually to pursue a case against an anonymous individual. Also, according to the article, the outed blogger intends to sue Google for $15 million because it 'breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity.' Do Web hosting services even have a fiduciary duty to protect their clients, or is this all legal bluff and bluster?" Should such anonymity-busting court rulings include a provision for penalties if the plaintiff does not follow through with legal action after outing their target?
Maybe, it depends on the local laws and the TOS. But they should have such. However, this release was due to a court order.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Sorry. "Expectation of anonymity"? Where did that come from? I don't think anyone should ever expect anonymity. In fact, I am becoming more in favor of making everyone use their real name, all the time, to lessen the ridiculous-ness, the hateful content, the juvenile, spiteful posts, that we regularly see on forums. In RL, there is no anonymity. Every action has a reaction. Maybe more people need to learn that.
Can the outed blogger sue the model for something along the lines of SLAPP? Well, obviously you can sue for anything, but is it likely to have the suit stand up in court?
Depending on what she's blogged about in the past, one could argue that being forced out into the open has diminished her chances of seeking gainful employment compared to when no one could just google her name and find that Liskula Cohen is a psychotic skank ho ...
Liskula Cohen was the blogger, right?
You have zero expectation of privacy when standing out in the open on a city street in the US, why would one assume you have an expectation of privacy when posting on a public forum on the Internet? I understand if you take some measure to really hide (wear a mask in public, or use something like Tor on the Internet), but even then, you could only blame the service you use to protect your privacy, not the end public bulletin (or blog) I would think...
Great, now you're going to sue Cowboy Neal!
Free Martian Whores!
You have a right to anonymity. You forfeit it the instant you use it to commit a crime or defame someone. The problem is, people have gotten so used to being able to act with impunity that the Internet has become a thoroughly nasty place (the Arpanet was never this bad), and they think it's now their God-given right to call anybody any name they like. It about damn time these jerks were outed and made to take responsibility for their actions.
I piss off bigots.
People should be charged when they intentionally and knowingly abuse the system (from filing bogus charges to initiating bogus lawsuits). Yes, I know, sometimes it's hard to tell when it's bogus and when it's just a "change of heart" but, often, an intelligent person can tell the difference. These sorts of abuses to the legal system harm its integrity and waste valuable resources that could be better spent dealing with, you know, real criminals and real societal problems. Were there actual consequences to abusing the system, perhaps people would be less inclined to play these sorts of games.
60% of the readers believes, that "if you are going to write something, you should have the courage to stand by it by putting your name on it.".
Not necessarily wrong, but considering how much the US is clamouring for people in other countries to be allowed anonymous and secret access to uncensored (but not necessarily unbiased) news, I find it odd that people in the US shouldn't be allowed to express anonymous speech.
Didn't some of the founding fathers publish a series of letters highly critical of the King's government before the revolution?
Sure, they might kill him, but in a society where you can be sued into what is essentially life long indentured servitude with no means of paying off the "damages" you've done to some company by mentioning that they might not look clean to you, wouldn't you rather face death?
it is often the case that someone who wishes to whistleblow on a company dumping into an aquifer, or having proof of a bullshit reason to invade iraq, is pitting themselves against a furious entity with a lot of power. such that you want anonymity ensured in communication channels where individuals are not afraid to speak out against crimes and abuses of the public trust by the government or other powerful entities
of course, the flip side of that concept is you get this ridiculous skankfight and the legal idiocy resulting from that. but protecting skanks from identifying each other is a small price to pay considering the upside of protecting the concept of anonymity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you don't have a right to anonymity when making public speech.
You only have a right to try to be anonymous. If someone discovers your identity it's your problem for not covering your tracks better.
Considering that Google revealed Ms Port's identity in response to a court order, and Google's TOS have clear language about this type of situation, I think all the talk about suing Google is moot.
The clear and specific reason why some people want anonymity to end is that people should be held accountable to the public pressure of opinion for what they say. There are no other reasons anyone has ever given. It's theorised that this will lead to a number of varied positive benefits, and there's a number of moral arguments supporting it (e.g. 'you cannot say what you want in real life without consequences, why should you have it on the internet?'), but we can probably all agree that the bolded statement is pretty much the founding reason for killing off anonymity. In consequence, that they should suffer negative consequences if they say anything bad.
At the same time, those people will often actively work for the creation of anonymous speech in what they see as totalitarian countries. For example, in China, Myanmar, etc.
The only mental mechanism which allows these viewpoints to coexist is the self-conviction that when it comes to oppressing problematic views, (my own) / (my country's public pressure) are forces for good and right, and hence it is good and right that people suffer consequences for challenging us.
On the other hand, the public pressure in China and Myanmar is for evil, therefore people there should be protected from that pressure.
Which is about as liberally navel gazing as you can be.
Please show how I am wrong.
The right to speak does not imply the freedom from responsibility.
Should such anonymity-busting court rulings include a provision for penalties if the plaintiff does not follow through with legal action after outing their target?
The answer to that question is, not no, but hell no.
It would be very destructive to make laws that require people to not drop a suit.
(The tag "what could possibly go wrong?" applies here.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
and completely morally bankrupt (in your argument here, not in general, no personal attack)
if the first amendment is not vigorously protected from idiotic legal decisions, the entire basis of the society upon which this might legal code rests begins to decay
my use of the term "fiduciary duty" is still 100% fine in this situation, since the use of term is not beholden to a purely legalistic interpretation. all businesses have, indeed, a fiduciary duty (not in legal terms) to protect and foster the trust of their clients, just as you note. that i am not using the term with 100% legality is besides the point, because there is a larger legal issue here in play that must be fought, however shoddy the ammunition
the legal code has no meaning if it corrodes the principles upon which it stands, which, in this case, it obviously does (the first amendment). despite all polemics and verbose gyrations to the contrary, despite the (supposed) legal preeminence of whomever is authoring such polemics
i respect no legal decision that obviously abridges the first amendment, and i expect no one else to either. of course, who the hell am i to declare my moral preeminence here over the decisions of those far more legally learned than myself? lots of people believe in such self-grandiosity, from al qaeda terrorists to morons who shoot abortion doctors. you would and should retort that this is a dangerous position for an obvious legal buffoon like myself to take, without a firm understanding of the subtleties involved. leave the legalities to the professionals
i would respond that normally, yes, it is not my position to speak, but when vital concepts are abridged, it is my duty to speak. the questionable opinions of legal buffoons like myself are moot as long as the legal structure and those charged with upholding the essential principles of the country actually do that job, and do it zealously. they haven't done so here
for the common people such as myself may not be legal scholars, but we're not idiots, and we will not tolerate a clear and obvious stray from a clear and obvious directive, which the ruling that compels google to divulge the identity of blogger obviously violates the spirit of the first amendment, if not the minuscule and mechanical letter of the law
most of the time those declaring their moral ascendency over legal rulings are deluded quacks. but every once in awhile, the system is in error, and the common layperson actually has it right. that is the case with the decision to divulge the blogger's identity: the legal system has failed to hold the most important principles up. and so we legal buffoons take notice, and we should take notice. the stakes are too high not too
so be careful that your fine tuned legal interpretations do not provide you cover for ignoring the most important principles in play here. not that you are doing such a thing, but someone in the system here obviously is. it effects us, and it is important to us, when the first amendment is grossly violated as is the case here. the first amendment should be important to you to
not that i am saying it isn't, but if you think that the use of the term "fiduciary duty" is incorrectly used in the fight against a completely bogus legal decision that obviously, even to a legal buffoon, goes against the first amendment, i would simply ask that you mute your objection in the name of the more important principles in play here
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's not a fair comparison at all, unless I missed the part where the plaintiff committed suicide. This sort of shoddy reasoning is exactly why things are going to hell. Additionally being anonymous is different than pretending to be a real person that isn't you and using that deception to willfully inflict harm on others.
In fact I'm not sure that there really is anything at all in common to there besides the net and attorneys.
What exactly was the revenge that the model enacted on the blogger? Did she key her car? Boil her pet bunny? If all she did was get the blogger's name disclosed and ask the blogger to stop, that seems pretty mild and proportionate to me.
Keep in mind that for a model, one's public image quite literally is one's meal ticket. If a blogger suceeds in convincing the public that you are a bad person who should not be emulated, then you are not going to get any more work as a model, ever.
If someone was purposefully and maliciously undermining my reputation, I would probably do the same things this model did -- better that than lose my career to defend some foul-mouthed blogger's alleged right to defame me.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The great majority of court cases are settled out of court. Either the parties reach an agreement or the moving party decides not to pursue the action. The courts encourage such settlements. It hardly means that the model is "contemptuous" of the justice system. Since she is the plaintiff, she is under no obligation to continue the action and can discontinue it at any time. As it is, she had the legal expenses to file the suit, compel Google to disclose the blogger's name and probably quite a few other expenses. If the model is content to simply out the person who defamed her, she is perfectly entitled to stop at that point or at any other point of her choosing.
The blogger can sue Google (good luck with that under their terms of service) or she can sue the model if she was actually harmed in some way by the disclosure of her identity. My take is that she doesn't understand the difference between free speech and anonymous slander. The first amendment only bars the government from making laws that diminish free speech. That's quite a bit different from a court deciding that what someone says rises to the level of slander and compels that the person who slandered someone be identified. The blogger has the "right" to say what she did but she may then have to show that what she said wasn't slanderous. There is no "right" to anonymity.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
When google or whatever give you the option to click "anonymous" then they should stand behind it, or change the button to say something different.
Is staying anonymous not possible? Fine, stop lying then by saying that it is!
Hiding some fine print in the TOS is anti-consumer and otherwise a pretty shitbag thing to do. In other industries, it would not be an issue, it would be fraud. Like saying the transaction is secure/encrypted but then oopsies, it's not really and they never intended it to be?
Details, legal crap, all that scoots aside. How about some basic honesty? (do no evil)
Yes, emotional pain and physical pain may be the same in the brain. I buy that one, it makes a lot of sense on a number of levels. However, does that follow that all laws that we made that involved physical harm in some way translate to emotional harm?
I just don't think it is that cut and dry. Whether the experience in the brain is the same or not is less relevant, than the question of what you are asking to be expected of people.
To show where I think the physical analogy breaks down, if I walk into the room with a baseball bat. I can tell pretty easily how much damage I can do to you with the bat. I can see where the empty space ends, and where your nose begins. I can choose to take a few extra steps away from you and swing my bat in peace, without worrying about smashing any part of you.
Then if I do hit you, whether through malice or negligence, the damage is done, and can be seen, and quantified, and the time it will take to heal will be directly proportional to the harndess with which I hit you, and indirectly so with how well you treat your wound.
Psychological pain is harder. I can swing my bat, lightly or hard. I can't really even say where you are that I might hit you, much less where I hit you. It doesn't matter how hard I swing, I can use all my might and do no damage, or merely move the wrong way, and do catastrophic damage.
Also, a miss now, can turn into a hit later, based only on whats going on in your head. In fact, you may unproductively relive the event and pain over and over in many different ways. Amplifying the pain far beyond anything that I could have done.
I really think this is a dangerous place to be asking the law to tread. Will we outlaw private clubs? Will we legislate the need to say hello and how are you doing with sincerity to every person we meet? Will we outlaw turning down people for dates? for sex? Perhaps cheating on your unmarried partner?
We can outlaw the burka.
Then require that all men and women walk around covered head to ankle to prevent offending anyone.
I know this is ridiculous but... I just don't see how what you seem to be arguing for is really viable as a principal. It seems like it would quickly require too high a standard. A standard that would then be mostly ignored throughout society.
It reminds me of the standards proposed by the Sexual harassment trainers. "Policy is we the incident will be judged based on what the person filing the complaint felt, and not the intention of the speaker". Nice, take a bad situation, and flip it around so its a bad situation for innocent people instead of the original victim.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
So sue them and follow it through to a win, don't just deliberately bring a case to the point of removing their anonymity and then drop it.
What would be the point of doing that? If being able to face my accuser is all I am after, then it's a waste of my time and money to continue the lawsuit once I have attained that goal. Now if I wanted to collect damages, etc, as well, I might continue the lawsuit; but in this case the plaintiff apparently didn't care about that.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.