Courts in a quandary over cheap shots by anonymous bloggers
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When a blogger referred to model Liskula Cohen as "psychotic" and a "skank," she sued Google to reveal the poster's identity.
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A New York model is called "a skank" by an anonymous blogger, so she sues Google for the blogger's name.
A Maryland Dunkin' Donuts franchise is called "dirty" by another unnamed blogger, so its owner sues a newspaper website to unmask the critic.
And earlier this month, a local online media forum posts a subpoena from a Pittsburgh woman seeking the identity of an anonymous poster so she can sue for defamation.
As anonymous content proliferates across the Internet -- one 2006 study estimated that 55 percent of American bloggers post under pseudonyms -- so does the opportunity for robust debate, invective, insights, insults and lawsuits.
Just how easy should it be to silence John or Jane Doe holding forth about a school superintendent's cronyism, a company's illegal dumping of toxic waste -- or just claims that a neighbor is of dubious moral character? When is anonymous Internet speech a richly textured exchange of ideas full of nuance, and when is it trash talk?
One local political blogger who goes by the name of The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat views it "like the Supreme Court's view on pornography.
"I know it when I see it," he said in an e-mail -- anonymously -- adding that he is careful to moderate comments that he thinks go too far, and has never been sued.
"Heck, the anonymous pamphleteering that went on between Adams and Jefferson in the early days of the Republic would probably make most bloggers today blush. I'd like to think that we're all part of that old tradition."
Still, in this new digital era, courts are struggling with an increasing number of legal actions against bloggers or the websites that post their comments, searching for ways to balance First Amendment free speech rights with the right to not have one's reputation trashed or privacy invaded online.
Most of these cases can't go anywhere unless the speaker is identified, and that's where the battle begins -- usually with a subpoena aimed at the website provider, says Sam Bayard, assistant director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University.
First Published March 21, 2010 1:05 am
