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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
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?
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.
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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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Maybe you should have read the links before commenting. The cited clauses (4 and 6) are:
So, while the cases are not exactly the same, my reading of this definition of what is sufficient to claim harassment is pretty broad (as was stated) and might be said to fit. So actually, its so relevant, that I wouldn't be shocked if the original suit cited this case directly.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"