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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?
Liskula Cohen is a skank and a ho. For that matter, so is Rosemary Port.
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.
Odd name, is it associated with Apple somehow?
a civil manner? What ever happened to two women hashing out their differences in a wrestling ring filled with pudding instead of in the courtroom. Kids these days....
Monstar L
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_16-2009_08_22.shtml#1250896617
Seen the fall out from Lori Drew case? Cause emotional distress to a minor and your violating the law. Granted the example cited on volokh is downright not nice but some of the clauses, like four and six, are so vague as to play into any prosecutor's hands.
Lori Drew stories on /. include
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/02/2017217/Judge-Tentatively-Dismisses-Case-Against-Lori-Drew?art_pos=1
http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/11/30/2014248/Groklaw-Summarizes-the-Lori-Drew-Verdict?art_pos=5
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
is this all legal bluff and bluster?
No, this is all stupid bluff and bluster.
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
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...
Following through after 'outing' seems a non-solution; you could still start cases you know you have a small (if any) chance of winning to 'out' someone.
My initial reaction actually was people cannot and should not expect anonymity on the internet, unless extreme measures are taken which often still do not guarantee anonymity 100%. Furthermore, it is not something people should want; if crimes are committed via internet or with assistance of it, then through proper procedures law-enforcement should be able to track culprits.
This however was not the case here, and so far I can see the only 'solution' would be to keep the identity of the accused anonymous during the trial and make it known only after a guilty verdict. This won't work, however, since often the daily life of the accused is relevant to the court proceedings; the accusing party has a right to be able to research what more the accused has been up to.
Perhaps an anonymous trial is only feasible for a small subset of charges. Don't see it happening though, this is probably just a necessary evil.
On a sidenote, if the charges are too ridiculous, any court would just dismiss the charges entirely without anyone being drawn out.
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.
to protect the first amendment, but suing companies for not more zealously protecting anonymity from idiot rulings is better than no protection at all. so let this retarded catfight proceed in the only way it can:
1. one dumb biatch gets a bucketload of cash from google
2. the other dumb biatch gets a career boost fom the streisand effect
as if getting on the front page of newspapers is bad for your career, no matter how lascivious. didn't paris hilton's "career" get started when video of her surfaced giving some trust fund ahole a hummer? and didja see her ass(ets)?
http://internetdefamationblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/liskulacohen.jpg
skank?
skankalicious!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
HOWEVER...
If she really does go through with the lawsuit, contract law will be the deciding factor here, specifically whether Google's Terms of Service promised any kind of anonymity. I expect it doesn't.
Let this be a lesson to all the bloggers out there, to post using TOR.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
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?
This is a GOOD thing: it strikes a blow against John Gabriel's Greater Theory of Internet Fuckwads.
If you are a fuckwad online, and get outed for it, good. Perhaps this will discourage fewer anonymous fuckwads in the future.
Lawsuits will never happen often enough to cause people to care, though. For every one incident where this happens, there's a few million where someone gets slagged off on the World of Warcraft forums, and the perpetrator gets away with it scot free.
Insults are not defamation. They are matters of opinion.
-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
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
I don't know about God-given, but everyone has a right to call people whatever names they feel like. Its a quaint little concept called 'Free Speech' and anonymity helps protect it by preventing reprisals against someone who says something unpopular or that makes the powerful look foolish.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
> You have a right to anonymity. You forfeit it the instant you use it to
> commit a crime or defame someone.
I've had some discussions about that in regards to free speech. Somebody told
me, that if you were to say to a cop "You're an asshole!" you'd be guilty of
defamation or whatever the legal term for it is and he'd have legal recourse
against you. If, OTOH, you'd say "In my opinion you're an asshole!" you'd be
covered under the first Amendment of free speech. Anyone know more about that?
Of course, in both examples above you'd likely get the shit kicked out of
you...:-D
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.
How can Google be responsible for protecting her anonymity, when it was a court order to reveal it. Is Google supposed to just refuse to fulfill the order? Please someone enlighten me.
you are correct Mister SpongeBobPoopyPants
Perhaps this will discourage fewer anonymous fuckwads in the future.
I don't know, there are an awful lot of offline fuckwads as well. I suspect that online assholes are assholes offline, too.
Free Martian Whores!
It is pretty obvious from the some of the things mentioned in the earlier article that Liskula Cohen thought the blogger was someone else (perhaps someone who has an ongoing feud with her). When she discovered that the blogger was not who she thought it was, she dropped the suit. It is even possible that her case for defamation was partly based on other behavior of the person she thought was the blogger.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I would so be laughing right now, if this was a cool scam on their part...2 friends get together and plan how to launch or boost the models presence as well as make money...she write a nasty column, the model fake sues to out the anonymous friend blogger, then she sues google for 2 million and wins, then the model because of this gets tons of free publicity, she lands a 2million contract and everybody wins, cause they get to watch the drama unfold!
You have a right to anonymity. You forfeit it the instant you use it to commit a crime or defame someone.
But, and this is the crux of this case, do you forfeit it the instant someone accuses you of defamation? Back to the case in hand, the model should be dragged back into court for contempt. This is clearly abuse of the court system to get revenge without caring about justice.
Have some expectation of Internet anonymity? Unplug your computer and toss it in the local Blendtec Anonymity Service.
(the Arpanet was never this bad)
Speaking as one who has been on the internet since when there were fewer than 10,000 hosts connected, I'd say your memory is flawed. "Flame wars" were as bad (or even worse) then.
There is a LOT more fear about what you can get away with now, because there are a LOT more laws about whether some speech is too free. And yet the flame wars have not been reduced one iota. Here again we've given up freedom for NO improvement in our situation.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is Slashdot, for crying out loud. If I can't be pedantic about the meanings of words here without being accused of being amoral, then where should I take my pedantry?
Didn't some of the founding fathers publish a series of letters highly critical of the King's government before the revolution?
There is a difference -- practical and emotional, if not necessarily legal -- in speaking Truth to Power and saying that a private citizen is a whore. The Founding Fathers knew they had no chance if the King sent a squad of soldiers to their house in the middle of the night, but they were all about "settling differences like men" when it came to perceived personal insults (just ask Alexander Hamilton...)
There's no mystery here. I wouldn't be surprised that upon learning that the defendant is a student, it was decided that any chance for fiancial gain was lost and the case was dropped to save legal costs.
Do you honestly believe that you should be able to sue someone simply for calling them a skank, online or otherwise?
If so, I can't wait till you have a daughter in high school,, you will be an instant millionaire the first week, followed shortly by being bankrupt the next.
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.
That's a nice bit of moralizing there, but "fiduciary duty" is a legal term of art and has a very specific meaning. It has nothing to do with fostering the trust of your clients. It's a specific relationship that's entered into when a professional has a certain kind of relationship with a client, or when a trustee/trustor relationship exists. A lawyer has a fiduciary duty to a client, because the client pays a retainer, which is held in a trust account until the lawyer does some actual work to earn the money, at which point it's transferred to the lawyer's account. This is just one example of course. The recognition of a fiduciary duty is a way of ensuring that professionals with specific expert knowledge, and access to the client's funds, don't take advantage of that position and simply fleece the client.
The kind of trust you're talking about is, for most corporations, essentially marketing, as your relationship with that corporation involves transactions of money for goods or services, where the exchange is completed upon payment. In the case of Blogger, it's even more extreme, since you aren't actually paying to use the service, which means that Blogger/Google owes you nothing. One could argue that being exposed to advertizing is consideration for services (and I would argue that myself), but even then, Blogger/Google is only obligated to give you what they promised in the contract. Clearly there's value in owning up to the terms of your contract, but it doesn't attach a fiduciary duty to either party.
And lastly, no contract or duty can force a party to break the law. Once the court ordered Google to turn over the information, any agreement they had with the Blogger to protect her privacy is dust in the wind. You can't contract to break the law.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Do Web hosting services even have a fiduciary duty to protect their clients, or is this all legal bluff and bluster?
If you want legal advice, why don't you go to Harvard or Yale law, bulletin board or something.
If you haven't noticed lately, our expertise lies mainly in games, which usually involves shooting people or blowing shit up. We're not to interested in the subtleties of legal discussion. If you can't shoot it or blow it the fuck up, we really don't have the patience for it.
Unless you are basically giving us a chance to call a member of the female persuasion whose twat we will never touch, a skank whore, then this article serves no purpose.
Liskula Cohen, you skank whore.
It's an interesting point, I remember in the first episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Penn Jillette said "...you'll notice more obscenity than we usually use...It's also a legal matter. If one calls people 'liars' and 'quacks' one can be sued and lose a lot of one's money...If we said it was all scams, we could also lose a lot of money. Bullshit's pretty safe."
"He is so stupid. And now back to the wall!" Moe Szyslak
Firstly, it should have been obvious to the courts that the allegedly defamatory speech was crossing the bounds of believability, ala Fallwel vs. Flynt, so it was a bad court decision straight off.
However, Google did exactly what I would have expected them to do; they stayed on the sidelines and then only when an actual court order was produced, gave up the requested information. Google has no business need to protect the anonymity of their users at all costs, nor should anybody expect them to. They didn't cave at the first sign of trouble like the AOL of yore did, and it is unreasonable to require them to do more than they did.
SirWired
Wouldn't it have been possible for the court to force the revelation of the blogger's identity to the other side for discovery purposes, but require them keep that identity secret under pain of concept of court?
This is awesome, because it doesn't involve just one skank ho, but two of them!
I think something fishy is going on here due to the amazingly high level of animosity: They are either closet lesbians who secretly want each other or they are in cahoots and scamming the legal system.
Either way, I want to see the sex tape.
One one hand, why should bloggers get to remain anonymous? It's not like they are commenters on an original post; they are the source of the article. If anyone can post anything about anyone else, how can we determine what is valid and what is mere conjecture (at best) or complete fabrication (at worst). However on the other hand, I can see the argument "why aren't bloggers offered the same freedoms that press reporters have?" coming out of this, but then bloggers aren't held to the same standards that reporters in the press/print media are held to...yet another reason why we should ALL be concerned that newspapers may go the way of the dinosaur.
The right to speak does not imply the freedom from responsibility.
What responsibility? The responsibility to only say things that are considered palatable by the fuckers on the other side of the truncheon? Holding people 'responsible' for their statements is a euphemism for punishing people for saying the 'wrong' thing; as in the antithesis of free speech.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I'm inclined to say yes. The blog was a clear attempt to defame the model, and the model could and should have pursued the case. Instead, they entered into a bad-faith legal proceeding, and this should carry penalties for not only wasting the court's time, but for causing anonymity to be broken without just cause. The blogger will no doubt face just consequences for her actions because of this -not through the legal system but through basic causality- and I have no sympathy for her personally. What I have a problem with is that the legal system was abused to make this happen, and that's just wrong. The model, too, should face consequences for involving the legal system in what could have been a justified case of restitution for wrong done, but was instead just petty vengeance.
Google is innocent. It followed proper procedures for dealing with a court order that it had no way of knowing was part of a bad-faith proceeding, and for disclosing to the blogger that this could happen.
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
Perhaps this will discourage fewer anonymous fuckwads in the future.
I'd personally prefer it if it encouraged fewer of them, or discouraged more... whichever paradigm works for you. Discouraging fewer of them seems like a goal that's entirely too easy to meet...
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
As soon as, no. You seem to be forfeiting it when someone presents the defamation to a judge and the judge determines that disclosing your identity is prudent to pursuing justice. This means that the judge actually saw the potential of defamation if not actual defamation and determined it was beyond hurt feelings to some extent.
In this model case however, the situation had some preconditions to it. The model thought the anonymous person was someone specific and had intent to sue that person. When it was determined to be just some fashion student with no money, the model stopped pursuing it because enough damage had already been done and it wouldn't be likely to recover any of the expenses. The student is going to have a hard time finding a job in the chosen field after it was found he was behind these actions. His future employers will see him as a liability. Losing a lawsuit for defimation would probaby be over board because it would pretty much lock him out of the field for any job with a potential of paying her back.
I think the model did the right thing here. Going ahead with the lawsuit and getting a 192 million dollar settlement on a student would have spiraled her career into serving coffee at RIAA executive functions. Had it been who she thought it was, she probably would have taken it further. But for now, she got as much justice as she thinks is appropriate. What she thinks is extremely important here because it was her who was defamed. She would set the terms to be made whole again in a court and unless they were ridiculous, the court would likely follow them.
Once the model found out who had made the posts, she may have decided the "you can't get blood out of a rock." That is, it wasn't worth the legal expenses to continue the action since the person responsible for the defamation didn't have sufficient resources to even pay those expenses; let alone pay any sort of punitive penalty.
Why should the model be "forced" to continue an action that won't bring her any compensation?
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
How about, instead of applying penalties, we change the approach? Right now the problem is that once the anonymous poster's identity is known, the original case is dropped and there's no way to force the plaintiff to file a new one naming an actual defendant. Instead, how about we not have the John Doe case dropped and a new one filed? It's, after all, the same defendant in both cases, the only difference is that in the second we know their name. So, file the John Doe case and make the case for having grounds to identify the defendant. Once the defendant's identity is known the case is amended to include their actual name, but since it's the same defendant no new case needs to be or is filed. If the defendant's responded, it now becomes much harder for the plaintiff to drop the case without the defendant agreeing to it and the plaintiff probably having to pay the defendant's legal bills.
"Rick, I think you're a retard," is opinion. "Hey everyone, Rick is a retard," is slander/libel/defamation (dependent on mode of delivery and jurisdiction). M'kay?
Not m'kay.
You saying, "Hey everyone, Rick is a retard" is not libel. For numerous reasons: /. threads are more akin to a discussion in a bar as opposed to a published editorial in a newspaper, which means that slander/libel laws are significantly less likely to be enforced.
1) I am unharmed by your statement. My reputation and well being have not be damaged. There is no injury, so there is no libel.
2) The possible readers of this post have no reason to believe that you have any knowledge or standing to make such an assessment. You do not point out your authority, nor is the local readership likely to infer that you have any meaningful authority over my medical diagnosis.
3)
All these reasons also apply to the original case. The Model had virtually no grounds for a libel lawsuit, that's why it got dropped. Why the judge allowed her to go after the speaker's identity with such a flimsy case is what bothers me.
Now, if I had said, "I work in the social services field and I have been helping Roger cope with his mental retardation for the last 5 years.*" After which point you suffered due to that statement, THEN we would be talking about defamation. Until then, I'd just be another a-hole on the internet.
-Rick
*to be clear: I am not a social service worker, and I have no knowledge of your mental status.
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
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
Actually, I seem to remember reading some time back that a lot of high-res/color printers *do* embed some form of unique indentifier in micro-print so as to identify where counterfeit money was printed (other printers would actually refuse to print something that looked money-like but identifying certain key symbols).
So if you printed something outing the local cops/politicians/etc and billboarded it, and they later tagged it to your printer because it had the same micro-print as a separate letter to your kids' school, or whatever, would the printer manufacturer (HP/Canon/etc) be on the hook if such functionality was not disclosed?
Since its possible that the identity and circumstances of the anonymous poster could affect the legal viability and utility of the lawsuit, and since the plaintiff cannot know those effects until the anonymity is pierced, probably not.
It serves neither the public interest, the interests of the potential defendants, nor the interests of the plaintiffs if plaintiffs in such cases were compelled to sue the people outed.
of course, someone sitting on the judicial bench somewhere doesn't think the first amendment trumps all of the other issues here. that doesn't make their ruling correct. and so, more creative legal avenues need to be considered to enforce the most important principle in play here. unfortunately the legal system seems to have waylaid the first amendment in this particular case, and they need to be corrected
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One of the three forms of defamation in California is "impugning the chastity of a woman." Another is accusing someone of a crime (outside the context of an actual complaint to law enforcement). If "skank" means "prostitute" then it qualifies on both counts.
Sorry, Charlie, you don't just get to accuse people of being prostitutes because you're anonymous.
I piss off bigots.
This is a bit different but similar in nature to what the RIAA was doing to discover the identities of filesharers: going after them with one charge to get their identity, drop that charge, and sue them once you have their name(s).
If you want to call somebody a skank, just use 4Chan!
Sue! Sue! Sue! Everyone is suing! I wanna sue! I'm tired of working for a living. Someone give me a reason to sue them! Oh, wait, we don't need reasons anymore! Woot!
a compliment from someone whose slashdot relationship with me is currently marked as "freak" is rare indeed... you skank! ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Anonymity should be judicially preserved in special cases that are in the public interest. It's pretty clear from the subject matter posted that the public interest is not being served, and therefore there is no need to preserve anonymity.
I piss off bigots.
It was better in some ways and worse in others. The worse was that the population tended be rather more heavily skewed towards geeks, who as we know tend to be rather strongly attached to their opinions and often rather egocentric. The better was that at least many of those geeks had semi-educated (if differing) opinions, and tended not to go towards lame lawsuits etc. The problems online tended to be those of a certain segment of society.
Now we have everyone on the internet, which opens it to everyone's problems. Whereas before I saw the major immaturity of a small number of individuals, now I tend to run into the more widespread immaturity of a larger group. Try playing an FPS/RTS online, for example. Where in the past you might have run into the odd jerk, it now seems to have become a festival of annoying idiots. That's not to say that non-geeks are generally non-idiots, but rather that now we have a greater population of annoying idiots to choose from, and it gets a lot more difficult to filter them out. Add to that the marketroids, scammers, and everything else, and it's become a pretty big mess.
That we have the lawsuit-happy over-sensitive variety of idiot is not surprising, but it is sad and was much less an issue with the original/earlier internet.
When it's a public interest. However, in this case, it was a private interest and I don't see where anything was handled wrongly.
And yes, we do punish people for saying the wrong thing. If I stand up in Times Square and read out classified documents, I can't get away with it on the grounds of free speech. Ditto if I accuse my neighbor of being a prostitute or a burglar. Ditto if I have signed an NDA and violate its terms.
Responsibility is the price of liberty. If you don't like it, go live in Somalia, which has no functioning government, and you really can say anything you like at any time... just as long as the local warlord lets you live.
I piss off bigots.
I suspect that online assholes are assholes offline, too.
Offline you don't have the anonymity part of the Gabe's equation. I suspect a lot of the online assholes are nerdy teenagers who wouldn't dare crossing your stare if you met them face to face.
Somebody told me, that if you were to say to a cop "You're an asshole!" you'd be guilty of
defamation or whatever the legal term for it is and he'd have legal recourse against you. If, OTOH, you'd say "In my opinion you're an asshole!" you'd be covered under the first Amendment of free speech
Wrong terms. Both you and the person who told you that are stupid, er, I mean in my opinion both you and the person who told you that are stupid. Protected speech or no, telling a policeman that he's an asshole to his face is always an unwise idea, no matter how much of an asshole he is.
I'm rather surprised I've gotten this far down in the discussion and no one has yet mentioned the Streisand effect. I'd never heard of this Cohen person before, but from reading about this case and looking at her picture the word "skank" does seem to apply.
Suuuuure Mr. 1,100,000+ uid.
if only the full implications of the internet on the first amendment were so cut and dry
there are plenty of legal precedents where a whistleblower was not properly protected from the wrath of powerful interests that were crossed, and those who disabled the whistleblowers protection were found culpable
the government is not the only entity out there that can abridge your anonymity, especially in the case of an entity as powerful as google, in a day and age where i can post something on botswana and it can be read the next minute in iceland
so you are legally correct, according to a venal, narrow, blind reading of law, rather than an attempt to apply the spirit of the first amendment to the internet age, and find that the government should not be the sole entity in question here, when it comes to protections to be rightfully expected by the layperson
of course, i speak from morality, but i don't speak from a corporate legal warchest, so expect the spirit of first amendment protections to recede in the internet age, unfortunately, until the full corrosive effects on society of not extending first amendment protections to powerful internet entities begin to manifest
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Alternatively, a testable, legal definition for what makes a person 'a skank' is established and enshrined in law (finally!).
1. Ms. Rose is exhonerated
2. Ms. Cohen is convicted of first-degree skankness, conspiracy to skank or skanking without a license, by a jury of her peers.
What the hell is a skank anyway?
During the French Revolution, the revolutionaries portrayed Marie Antoinette as a lesbian, for example. This back when that wasn't something one would be willingly out about. I can't think of any specific examples, but my hazy memory suggests that the American revolutionaries portrayed the British in general, and the British royalty in ways that were less than factual.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Frankly, I'm glad that there is no legality that requires Google to enforce your morality (or anyone else's for that matter).
The availability of rather strong anonymous mechanisms (post AC to Slashdot from a public library, they won't find you; there are lots more) makes your whimpering about the spirit of this and that and corrosive effects rather tiresome.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
implies poor hygiene and flakiness, untrustworthiness
also has class overtones
skank was (is) a generalized slang term for filth
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That would force people to be responsible for their actions. I think posting real names would also fix all the crap my son gets himself into on line. He would know that he can't get away with it being 13. His age would be verifiable.
Sigh. It doesn't work that way. I have a fairly unusual spelling for my last name. Even so, when I first Altavistaed my name when it first came online in the mid 1990s I found a minor league hockey goalie and an actor who appeared in Scarface with the same first name/last name spelling.
Today, there are "Steve Baur"s on all the social networking sites. None of them are me - I don't have a single social networking account.
Also, read this - http://www.elliott.org/blog/tsa-nabs-another-five-year-old-security-threat/
beware her sister, Staphie Habib, skank of unsanitary hummus factories ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'd say that Rosmary Port has defined her own new class. Won't be long before someone has a blog called the "Ports of New York" in her honor. Oh my gosh there already is: Looks like google already has a blog for "the ports of new york". Will they out it?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
John Doe subpoenas should result in the name being released to either a special master or to a "firewalled" lawyer whose only job it is is to contact the named defendant and serve him with papers. The named defendant should be given an opportunity to either quash the original subpoena after the fact or petition the court that the lawsuit will be in to be allowed to use a pseudonym.
If there is no forthcoming lawsuit, the would-be plaintiff never gets "usable" access to the defendant's information.
If this can't happen for whatever reason, the court issuing the subpoena to the ISP should issue a gag order on the plaintiff, which can be lifted after a lawsuit is actually filed. The lawsuit should be filed with the defendant's name sealed until it's determined that it's in the public interest to name the person.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
that battling skanks are protected as a side effect is a valid tradeoff for a legal understanding serving the greater good
common laypeople who question or accuse powerful entities like the government or large corporations deserve legally sanctified anonymity. in cases where power is asymmetrical between accusers, whistleblowers can be abused mightily if they were not anonymous
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My point is that she should not have brought a court action just to expose someone's name and then drop it. That's abusing the court system, and therefore she clearly is contemptuous of the court. Interpreting that as "she should be forced to continue" is misrepresenting my point. And to counter the "how do you know", well, that's what the court system is for, making an informed decision on the truth of someone's intent (e.g. the difference between murder and manslaughter).
Alternatively, the judge should be able to award damages to the defendant when someone brings their name into question like that, even if it's just a token amount. There should be consequences for bringing mischievous lawsuits.
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.
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.
If she planned to fight defamation by being called a skank and/or a ho, I wonder what the person's defense would be. That she is a skank and is known to have done A and B, and exhibits ho properties including X and Y.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
your legal understanding of the fine mechanics here is beyond my ability to refute
but don't you think there is a larger concept in play here that needs to be zealously protected?
your analogy to a website aping a film of mine as a snuff film is incomplete
snuff films are obviously illegal regardless, so if the films in question were instead satirical of my creations, this is in fact protected by law. plenty of politicians would lambast and sue political cartoonists that accuse them of all sorts of character flaws and malfeasance were it not for the legal protection of satire
likewise, to call someone a skank or a ho is simply the same sort of empty personal attacks as a political cartoon that anyone with the slightest sense of social sense should be able to weather without comment. its baseless. of course, if you have some sort of insecurity, you can proceed on legal grounds and find woefully out of bounds legal professionals sympathetic to your wounded pride, and wind up with a ruling that puts a huge dent in people's expectations of anonymity to speak their minds
this hurts society. it puts a huge damper on the free exchange of ideas. for the sake of what? a model's wounded pride and ego?
now if instead of flinging baseless accusations at this model, the anonymous blogger had directly attacked her means of financial support, such as accusing her of not showing up for modelling work, of being unprofessional and unprepared for gigs, this is grounds to proceed against her, according to the analogy you outline. absolutely i agree with this
but just calling someone names? what is that? is that really slander or libel? does it impact ability to get work? is there any substantiation? or is it just empty anger everyone should be able to ignore if they have any common sense? should our laws really empower empty insecurities at the cost of everyone's ability to have a certain comfort level for fully expressing their opinions on all sorts of controversial topics?
the internet is completely new, legally and socially speaking, and its implications are still being worked out. there are tradeoffs, as you well know on delicate issues. you can err too far on the side of protecting abusive trolls. but you can also err too far on the side of protecting insecure people with ego problems, at the cost of everyone's fair expectation of anonymity, and therefore the cost of the richness of exchange of ideas on the entire internet. don't you think, as i think, that the cost of allowing a few horrendously abusive trolls who perhaps don't deserve any protection is worth it?: a richer, freer, exchange of ideas?
all i am asking you to do is to consider that some conventions of internet communication, such as blogging, deserves an expectation of anonymity perhaps greater than you (and the judge who ruled of outing the blogger) would initially give. if only because the internet is a new medium, and has a new convention of maximum societal value, which the judge's decision hurts
hurts far more than any baseless accusations flung around by nominally empty and pointless blogs hurt insecure people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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
Seriously, they know each other. Cohen goes after this, THEN drops the suite. BUT, Porter goes after Google. I wonder if cohen will end up with millions after this? Sounds complicated, but it makes more sense then does the actions that have occurred so far.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Any automatic penalty will be abused.
But it certainly is worth it looking into the motives and reasons. They may have just decided that they don't want to bancrupt a student. You know, some people who go to court are still human beings.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'll spell it out for you IANAL. That doesn't make my point any less valid. "I know you're wrong, but I won't tell you why," isn't the most convincing of arguments, but I have researched this, so I'll offer some evidence anyway.
We have a right to free speech and freedom of assembly. Generally this means that most anonymous speech cases are not adjudicated on the anonymity factor, but how they impact the well established and explicitly stated rights. For example, in NAACP v. Alabama, the court found that subpoena of the NAACP's membership lists violated the due process clause and the right to assemble. In Talley v. California and Watchtower v. Village of Stratton SCOTUS found that mandatory registration of solicitors ran afoul of free speech protection.
However, you have to look no further than the paid for statement of next campaign ad you see, or the disclosure requirement on the next political donation you give to see that there is no universal right to anonymity.
Imagine a graffiti artist arguing that he can't be prosecuted under vandalism law because he was exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right to anonymous free speech. The very idea that we can't seek out your identity if you're suspected of doing something illegal because of protected anonymity is absurd.
G'day, I find this whole thing abso-bloody-lutely ridiculous for this young lady, and I use the term loosely as my mother taught me to be respectful, decided to call a model " A SKANK" and then tried to hide behind Google's TOS expecting that they would shield her for slander and libel. The courts made them give her name out and rightly so as the picture shown of the young woman who is 29 and who feels that 37 is an old hag leads me to believe that she is jealous of the Canadian model's success and nothing more. People who slander and libel others have no right to whine when caught. I'm not a bible thumper, but it says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." This is something that she, the blogger didn't do as she took it on herself to call names without proof. It's obvious to me that this bird has some serious issues with models and chose Liskula Cohen as her target of the moment expecting never to be found out. Well, what if the shoe was on the other foot and Ms. Cohen was calling this blogger the very same names, she'd be doing the same thing, screaming at Google to tell her who this person was who was casting defamatory remarks against her. Bottom line she got caught and now she don't like having to pay the price.
i am taking a position that no one should be forced out of anonymity... and i'm the one who is "forcing" my morality onto you?
your description of my point of view is logically incoherent
i hearby force you not to reveal yourself to me!
i hearby force you to have more freedom than you desire!
huh?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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)
I've had some discussions about that in regards to free speech. Somebody told me, that if you were to say to a cop "You're an asshole!" you'd be guilty of defamation or whatever the legal term for it is and he'd have legal recourse against you. If, OTOH, you'd say "In my opinion you're an asshole!" you'd be covered under the first Amendment of free speech. Anyone know more about that?
Yes, it's incorrect. Slander and libel only apply to statements of fact, and they apply to statements of fact regardless of how you try to pass them off as opinions. "That police officer assaulted me" is defamation. "I think that police officer assaults people" is still defamation. "That police officer is an asshole" is not a statement of fact and is therefore not defamation, unless you're claiming that the officer is literally only an anus, in which case you'd probably get brought in and tested for a few drugs.
the issue in question is the government
1. compelling google to reveal someone's identity
2. or not
option #2 is this radical difficult to grasp concept called "the government not doing anything"
please explain, in your vast intellectual superiority, how that equates to "the government expending resources"
durrr
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think it should be quite obvious to everyone, the greatest threat in any legal battle isn't so much the law, it's the extravagant costs incurred in court. The mere threat of dragging someone through that hell, forcing them to hire an attorney to defend against any alleged transgression, is usually enough to bully law-abiding citizens into doing whatever the big guy asks of them.
To launch that intimidating process, and then abort it prematurely, should be considered a threat and punished as such. Either you follow through to the end and accept whatever judgment is handed to you, or if you do chicken out early, it is considered forfeiture by default. I think that would cut down on frivolous court abuse, and as a bonus it would stop the RIAA dead in its tracks!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
That is my impression too. Apparently these two women already knew and disliked each other offline:
Now it may be that Port's blog really did harm Cohen's reputation. If so, then all this is justified. But I doubt it - I don't think many people would take anonymous online claims that someone is a "ho" seriously. On the other hand, while anonymity is an important political freedom, this is not what it is intended to protect.
This looks to me like a private spat that has blown way up out of proportion. It does not look to me like something that is worth the court's time. If these two women were yelling at each other in a public street, I don't think the court would care. It appears to me that we have laws designed for career-limiting libels being applied to a tempest in a teapot, wasting public money and resources that could be better used for something more significant. As a consequence, we have precedent for political speech being set by exactly the wrong sort of case.
Our legal systems seem to have real problems coping with the blurring of private and public online. "Private" used to mean something known to a few people, while "public" applied to activities that were widely observed. While anyone can read a blog, before the circus this particular blog was probably more private than public. Similar problems occur with copyright infringement, where formerly accepted activities create massive risk because they are seen as public - though in many cases they may not be any more widely observed than the mixtapes of my youth. (Admittedly it is very hard to tell which infringement online is limited to a few people, and which to a large group. But my point is that communication intended for and witnessed by a small audience is being regulated as if it was published on the front page of the New York Times. This can result in ridiculous judgments and significant waste of public resources.)
The responsability that comes with Free Speech is that of accepting other people's speech even when we don't like it (such as, I don't know, being called a "ho" or a "skank"), and it is going and punishing it, using the courts no less, what's running away from that responsability.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
I'll begin by saying IANAL. That out of the way, in the Blogger Terms of Service, Section 3, there's explicit language giving Google the right to disclose personal information if required by, among other things, "court order." This would seem to remove any recourse the "skank" blogger has, since presumably she agreed to these terms when she began writing her blog. As far as her attorney saying that the "right of privacy" is inherent in the First Amendment, I would suggest that's a rather liberal interpretation of that amendment, and not an absolute protection even then. If I'm not mistaken, libel or slander is generally not protected speech. The fact that the plaintiff in the original suit has now decided to drop the suit does put an interesting wrinkle in this whole sordid affair. I doubt we've seen the last of either Ms. Cohen or Ms. Port... sigh...
Accusing someone of a crime in Times Square is libel. Doing it in a police station is, obviously, protected speech.
As for your paranoid fantasies about the government and the corporations, get over them. With the Internet, cheap printers and video cameras, and print-on-demand publishing it has never been easier to spread your opinion around as much as you like without any restraint whatsoever. That's where the problem lies. Additional freedom has not been accompanied by additional responsibility.
I piss off bigots.
I think Rosemary looks better. Liskula isn't gonna age well, imo.
Goggle at first refused to reveal the blogger's identity. Only after a Court Judge ordered Google to comply and reveal the name did they do so. The simple fact is that if you say anything online, you should be willing to stand behind it regardless of being posted under your name or a pseudonym. If you're not willing to stand behind your statements, then you should keep your comments to yourself. Much like many parents have taught their kids, "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all."
The fact that the two females knew each other, and that one of them chose to use a public forum for her own petty crap goes to show the character of the person. I don't think it mattered who blew her cover, she'd still want to sue.
But I'd be willing to wager that the models slander case gets refiled if the blogger gets any money out of Google.
IMHO I think both females are looking for a quick buck.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
98% percent of lawyers make the other 2% look bad.
It's sad that suing is so damaging to someone's financial situation. It shouldn't.
If someone is objectively wrong, why can't they be punished?
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
...malicious prosecution?
This is a stupid fucking cat fight between two ho that should have been solved in a kiddie pool of Jello but instead one of them run crying to the legal system :(
My first post to the internet was in July of 1984. Look up how many hosts comprised the internet then.
My first post to slashdot was in 1999, but I always posted AC until a few years ago.
I'm terribly sorry, but Slashdot wasn't and isn't the onliest website in the world, especially not outside the USA. As for me, I never created an account until one day I actually found something to post and some time to do it in - which would probably be the same for a lot of other folks.
But I remember those flamewars. Loads of fun with Derek Smart, in the games newsgroups. Or the writer of the "worst Usenet fantasy novel ever" who was convinced it was a masterpiece. I'm pretty sure there were others (You can still find my real name listed on a nazi website because I voted in a group they didn't like too much - that was a pretty good flamewar :)). I got even got suspended for a week at the university for participating in one of those :)
I also remember C-beams glittering in the dark at the Tannhauser gate, but that's another story...
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
IMO, there are two problems with construing saying "you're an asshole!" to a cop as defamation:
In order to successfully defame the cop, it would help to make the statement something that could plausibly be construed as a sincere accusation (e.g. say "you are corrupt" instead) and to express it to a third party instead of the cop himself (or at least yell it loud enough for bystanders to hear).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I think the recent news reports regarding bloggers being outed and then fired for the content of their entirely legal publishing has made the argument that anonymous use of the internet is defensible for freedom of speech. Perhaps because the journalists have a respect for sources that are not disclosed, and protecting those sources, there is a sympathy to this story that is starting to gain momentum. The end result is that the discussion that only criminals benefit from anonymity is weakened.
It is hard for me personally to believe that anyone expects anonymity on the internet, but I have assumed the FBI had recorded all of my posts since 1992.
For the sake of argument:
Your post has greatly offended me and I consider YOU to be a "fuckwad"! Please submit all your personal information in a reply to this post.
One persons fuckwad is another persons herowad.. or something
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Thank you sir; I always wondered how to properly defame an officer of the Law.
Cue l*wy*r attack in 3.. 2.. 1..
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
But at least back then, they showed their math.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Just because you want it that way doesn't make it so.
First Cash v. John Doe : the court rejected the motion to file his motion under seal, effectively exposing him
Manalapan v. Moskovitz : the anonymous blogger at issue isn't one of the parties to the suit and isn't involved, basically the court said it wouldn't reveal the identity of the blogger if the state didn't have any reason for requesting the info.
Dominick v. MySpace : EFF argued that the petition violates the First Amendment right to remain anonymous until a litigant can demonstrate a viable legal claim.
Fix Wilson Yard v. City of Chicago : not resolved, but there isn't a clear legal claim against the anonymous.
E. Van Cullens v. John Doe : plantiff withdrew the claim after a anti-SLAPP countersuit was filed, essentially admitting he wasn't likely to prevail.
RIAA v. Verizon : a good victory, but not at all relevent
Doe v. Cahill : this one is actually fairly close to what we have here. The allegedly defamatory statements are, "Anyone who has spent any amount of time with Cahill would be keenly aware of such character flaws, not to mention an obvious mental deterioration" and "Gahill (sic) is a paranoid". It should be noted that Cahill is a city councilman, and thus a public figure, and therefore defamation suits are less likely to prevail. The Delaware Supreme Court held, "that a defamation plaintiff must satisfy a "summary judgment" standard before obtaining the identity of an anonymous defendant."
So even in the case on point (in Delaware, not New York) the court would have released the personal information had the plaintiff raised a claim that could withstand a summary judgment.
In this case, the court found, "Here, petitioner ... has sufficiently established the merits of her proposed cause of action for defamation."
So again, your supposed right to anonymity ends as soon as someone can bring a claim against you that can survive some preliminary scrutiny. This case, Cohen v. Google, survived scrutiny as did First Cash v. John Doe and the court unmasked the blogger. In Dominick v. MySpace, E. Van Cullens v. John Doe, and Doe v. Cahill, the court didn't find a sufficiently meritorious claim to unmask the anonymous blogger.
If you had a RIGHT to anonymity the court couldn't unmask you EVEN IF there was a legitimate claim against you. This is why the graffiti artist isn't a strawman, under your imagined right to anonymity, the court would be bound to respect anyone trying to be anonymous, in spite of clear evidence of wrong doing.
The right to speak does not imply the freedom from responsibility.
Why do you hate America?
As our robotic overlords often put it - "does not compute".
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
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.
Having (unfortunately) been involved in a defamation case myself, I think it would have been an awfully interesting trial. In order to be defamation, a statement must 1) be untrue and 2) cause damage to somebody's reputation.
So what we're talking about here are the words "skank," "ho," and "psychotic." Is calling somebody a skank a statement of fact? We would need a legal definition of what a "skank" is. I figure it would take several days of legal argument just to hash out that part of it. Then, having established the legal definition of a "skank," Ms. Cohen would have to provide at least some evidence that she is not, in fact, a skank (unlike a criminal trial, civil suits are based on a preponderance of the evidence -- if Cohen does not actively defend herself, she loses). So her private sexual life will now become a matter of public record.
How about "psychotic?" Well, that's certainly something we can prove in court. We'll subject Ms. Cohen to a battery of psychological tests to determine her state of mind. That should certainly be pleasant for her.
Now, "ho" is a bit more complicated. Does it literally mean "whore," a.k.a. prostitute? We'll need to legally define this as well.
I think what happened here is that some lawyer with a brain finally clued her in about what exactly would happen in court if she pushed this through. You don't get to just stand there and say "It's not true, poo on you."
Liskula Cohen could have saved thousands of dollars by "outsourcing" all this to India. India Police (Cyber Crime) may not be exactly a private investigator, and they may have done that kind of thing for "extra credits", but I'm speaking of known situations here. In one case bloggers based outside India bad-mouthed the products/services offered by a private party, also based outside India. The private party had an Indian affiliate who complained to India Police (that is all we know, anything else remains hidden). India Police then (eagerly, surprise surprise!) requested Google for IP records. Google's Legal Investigation Support team (Google LIS) supplied the blogger IP records (under Section 91 of India Criminal Procedure Code), hardly any questions asked (surprise?, surprise?). The bloggers were not even based in India. India Police handed the IPs to the private party (mission accomplished). The bloggers were then harassed through a SLAPP-style suit tailored to force favorable settlements.
So all that Liskulla needed was to go through an India outfit, get those India cybercops a little excited (remember that police malfeasance is already a big issue in India).
Note: I am not actually suggesting that anybody take that route. I'm just alerting you all to the dangers of this, in public interest.
Summary: India Police has rights over your IP records, and they are eager to ask for it. And Google obliges them. And you think you have free speech.
I am of course, an Anonymous Coward.
OK, so long as that is made plain at the outset. If the judge decides that purely unmasking a presumed-innocent person is a legitimate use of the court system, then you can proceed.
It's OK, most other posters didn't bother to check the New York laws on defamation either, so you're only averagely retarded for posting how you think some hypothetical law should work in a hypothetical jurisdiction.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Not exactly, but somewhat.
Plan A, using special master:
Plaintiff wants to sue unknown defendant. Plaintiff sues Google to unmask John Doe. Court orders Google to turn identity over to special master. Google sues John Doe. Special master serves papers on John Doe. John Doe petitions court for immediate dismissal for any valid reason, including that original subpeona should never have been granted; for permission to remain anonymous; or a gag order on the Plaintiff.
Plan B using "firewalled" lawyer paid for by plaintiff: Similar to above.
Plan C, gag order:
Plaintiff wants to sue unknown defendant. Plaintiff sues Google. Judge issuing subpeona puts a gag order on Google with a recommendation to the eventual trial judge to lift it only if doing so is in the public interest. Google gets identity and does or does not proceed with lawsuit. Ideally, judge issuing subpeona notifies the target of the subpeona.
I didn't say so, but in non-emergency situations the actual target of the subpeona should be notified before it is issued and be given a chance to fight it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ahh, I should have put that limitation on my post.
I have no distinct knowledge of New York state laws. But in the state of Wisconsin, the above statement would not meet the requirements for libel.
As I have learned first hand. Although, in my case, they phrase was "She couldn't teach a 2 year old to crap itself" in regards to a social studies teacher at Herzing College in Madison, WI.
-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
Here, one more to your list: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1340361&cid=29125983
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13