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Internet Defamation Suit Tests Online Anonymity
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jun 18, 2007 07:06 AM
from the nameless-and-hope-to-stay-that-way dept.
from the nameless-and-hope-to-stay-that-way dept.
The Xoxo Reader writes "Reuters reports that two women at Yale Law School have filed suit for defamation and infliction of emotional distress against an administrator and 28 anonymous posters on AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth), a popular law student discussion site. Experts are watching to see if the suit will unmask the posters, who are identified in the complaint only by their pseudonyms. Since AutoAdmit's administrators have previously said that they do not retain IP logs of posters, identifying the defendants may test the limits of the legal system and anonymity on the Internet. So far, one method tried was to post the summons on the message board itself and ask the defendants to step forward. The controversy leading to this lawsuit was previously discussed on Slashdot."
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Law Student Web Forum: Free Speech Gone too Far? 264 comments
The Xoxo Reader writes "Today's Washington Post carries a front-page article on the internet message board AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth), which proclaims itself the "most prestigious law school discussion board in the world." The message board has recently come under fire for emphasizing a free speech policy that allows its users to discuss, criticize, and attack other law students and lawyers by name. Is this an example of free speech and anonymity gone too far, or is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community?"
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Your Rights Online: Subpoena Sought For Browsed News Articles 172 comments
The Xoxo Reader writes "A new filing in the Autoadmit Internet defamation lawsuit (previously discussed here on two occasions) reveals how the plaintiffs' lawyers have attempted to discover the identities of the defendants, who posted under pseudonyms on a message board without IP logging. The defendants had posted links and excerpts of several Web pages that mention the plaintiffs, including a Washington Post article, a college scholarship announcement, and a federal court opinion. Now the plaintiffs are asking those Web sites for logs of everybody who accessed those articles in the hours before the allegedly defamatory content was posted. (All the more reason to read the web through Google cache!) The plantiff's motion for expedited discovery includes copies of the lawyers' letters to hosting providers, ISPs, and others. It also includes replies from the recipients, many of whom point out that the lawyers' requests are technically impossible to fulfill. No matter; the plaintiffs are asking the court to issue subpoenas anyway. This thread contains a summary of the letters in the filing."
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nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
Furthermore, if they don't have sex with children, embezzle money, practise cruelty to animals and throw firebombs at orphans as a recreational activitiy, then my name is not Anonymous Coward.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Re:nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
sense (Score:3, Informative)
Serving the summons? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Serving the summons? (Score:5, Informative)
Posting a summons on an internet message board would probably do a lot to get people's attention (which, IMHO, seems to be kind of the root cause of this case to begin with), but there's no legal way to prove it was read unless the defendants post in thread. Which, even then, sounds rather lame to me..
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:Serving the summons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I would assert that privacy is fundamental to the perpetuation of a free society. But this isn't an issue about privacy, it's about anonymity, which is different. I may privately think that another person molests children. I may even write this down in my diary, and I would maintain that it would be unethical for others to force me to reveal these completely private thoughts.
I certainly wouldn't have the ethical standing to publish this diary anonymously, however. Do you see the difference?
Parent
Re:Serving the summons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so say I'm imagining some horrors. What then? What do you propose should be done to me, to "sort me out"? You're assuming that I'm going to "do something stupid" so are you suggesting that my "ignorance and fear" should be corrected preemptively?
If I'm prone to imagining horrors, should I be submitted to some kind of corrective therapy, against my will, just to be sure that my ignorance and fear don't get the better of me? Even if I never really would do "something stupid" about it? What's wrong with letting me have my ignorance and fear? Who are you to tell me what I should or shouldn't think or imagine?
Frankly, I think a world where privacy is unneeded would be great, but in such a world everyone would have to mind their own business. As long as there are people who believe in thoughtcrime, and people who want to "sort you out" before you "do something stupid", I think maybe privacy is something we should hang onto for just a bit longer.
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Re:Serving the summons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange. I would think that a free society would be one that cannot assume, based on a person's private thoughts, that said person would "do something stupid." Nor, for that matter, would a free society be one where people may be investigated based on the private, groundless suspicions of others. A free society is not one that seeks to deal with every paranoid instance of its members' private thoughts.
Now, if I periodically saw other peoples' crying children leave the individual's house, or saw illegal child porn on display after being invited into their house, I certainly would have an obligation to have this "sorted out right away." Fact is, people have groundless suspicions about things every day, and a society with the right to get to the bottom of every such suspicion - even when the suspicious person understands that there is no tangible certainty - is the opposite of free.
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, dumbass.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah but they've really have liked his suspension-of-habeas-corpus thing.
Re:Serving the summons? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think this is limited to GOP, as the DEMs also have their issues. Just take a look at the members of congress (both parties), and see who's children are registered lobbyists on issues before congress. If you think that GWB has a low approval rating, and that is in and of itself grounds for impeachment, I would suggest that we impeach the entirety of congress, because the approval rating of congress is even lower than that of GWB.
The problem is, that everyone loves (or likes enough) their congressman, who brings home the bacon from DC, but hates everyone else's for doing exactly the same thing.
I do have a suggestion for the future. Vote third party. I'm Libertarian (big and little "L"), but quite honestly, i'd vote Green (YUCK), Peace n Freedom (Yuck), American Independent (Yuck), Natural Law Party (Yuck) rather than D or R, just to shake DC up. As long as you keep voting for D or R, you're gonna get the same thing as you have now. If you vote for change, and don't get it, you deserve what you get if you don't vote third party.
In fact, I dare say, that if you vote D or R expecting change, you are insane (literally). Only way to change things is to vote third party. Three or four third party congress critters might be enough to shake things up enough to cause a greater revolt.
Sadly, too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that there is only two choices.
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Re: (Score:2)
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You have had instances where DNA, from a rape, has been used then once the owner of the DNA was identified they served that person. I would guess this would be the same kind of thing, they have filed with the court that they are suing LawGuy69, then they would request that a judge give them the right to ide
It's Libel (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't see how this could move forward unless the identities are revealed. How else are you going to serve a summons to "LawGuy69" and "LegallyBlonde11111one"? The laws regarding serving summons are pretty explicit.
From what the article said, there's a clear case of libel here. The remarks were untrue, malicious and there's considerable damage. It's surprising that people would take an internet forum attack seriously, but lawyers are slow learners. If the people responsible for that little fuck fest are unmasked, they are going to be made to pay. In cases like this, the damage is what counts even if it now looks foolish.
The unmasking should be easy, if StanfordTroll and friends really are law students. I doubt they have a botnet, so they should be easy enough to root out from records the ISPs keep. If they are not really students or are more sophisticated than average, there's a more interesting story here. I would not put it past either political party to engage in these kinds of attacks for political ends.
The rub is not the burning of the trolls but the lack of anonymity for whistle blowers and others actually reporting news that might embarrass the powers that be.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Better make sure the kids are in bed before you go looking at them, methinks.
Easy, just get the memory (Score:5, Funny)
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What's even more surprising (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
For one of the women (I'm not sure if she's one of the plaintiffs or someone else), they apparently posted the Facebook and Flickr picture
From TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that isn't what you've created, you naive jackass. There is no anonymity in the town square: people speaking their "brilliant or foolish" (or slanderous and defamatory) thoughts are identifiable, and the repercussions for their actions can range from social disapproval to legal sanction. Blanket anonymity creates the exact fucking opposite environment from that of the town square. What Mr. Cohen has created rather resembles a public toilet. This is the same problem with news articles that rely entirely on anonymous sources to divulge personal details about the subject: how is the content any more credible than the random scrawlings of an interstate rest area?
Anonymity is one thing if there is the possibility of unjust sanction for free speech, as in the case of whistleblowing. But if major law firms are, apparently, making decisions about others' character based on a bunch of anonymous cowards on online forums, it just goes to show that no amount of expensive education can cure idiocy.
Of course, Congress is mostly a bunch of lawyers, and it's fun to imagine leading politicians being brought up on specious charges. Perhaps I'll have a change of heart if the president gets impeached, and the impeachment cites "A reputable source named Sunburnt on an anonymous Internet forum, who repeatedly asserts that the President secretly collaborates with the North Korean government."
Re:From TFA: (Score:4, Insightful)
You are 100% correct. When are people going to learn that typing stuff and putting it out on the public Internet is the electronic equivalent of shouting things to the world? There is no anonymity; everything can be traced back to somebody given the time and resources. If you say something in writing and allow it to be published to the world in order to damage someone's reputation, that's libel. Pure and simple. Hiding behind a pseudonym doesn't make it legal or right. If you can't stand by what you say, then don't say it, least of all in a public forum!
Thank you, we now return to you to your normally-scheduled incoherent Slashdot ramblings.
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See, now I just feel cynical. I think most already know this, and are in fact eager to share their thoughtful gems with the world-at-large. MySpace, Blogger, Livejournal, etc...it seems that one can make a fair bit of cash by encouraging folks to seek the attention of anonymous others.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
There is really no reason to bash our nation's fine rest areas, sir. Since the bathhouses closed, they're the source of 90% of my dates.
you're confused (Score:4, Interesting)
therefore, all that is important is the speech we make. who we "are" is no more, or ess, than the words we say. i kind of like this idea: a complete meritocracy of ideas. attaching my speech or your speech to an "identity" won't make it any more or less responsible. so the line in the sand that you are drawing is a red herring: there is no public toilet posting board versus philosopher's lounge posting board. all posting boards are pretty much a special combination of interstate rest stop and town square tha toyu find on the internet. go ahead and view this thread with the cutoff point of -1 for posts. cheek to jowl with some high level intellignet and witty comments, you will find the most utterly retarded and ignorant asocial negative bullshit
in other words, welcome to the internet. you should try to familiarize yourself a little more with your chosen subject matter. there is no such thing as an identity on the internet. it's all without accountability and recourse. which makes it truly free speech
free speech brings out the good the bad and the ugly in human nature. so rather than some rather naive and idealistic individuals expecting that all human speech somehow become only good on the internet, maybe instead some of you, like these litigious law students, need to develop a higher level of tolerance to simple pointlessly negative and useless juvenile snark. it's not going away, no matter what you do. so just get used to it
using your analogy, when you use a rest stop on the highway, and you see the retarded commentary on the walls, does it devastate you? emotionally damage you? no. you just roll your eyes and forget about it 10 seconds later. so why would the snarky juvenile idiocy damage you on the internet?
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Re:you're confused (Score:5, Insightful)
I always read Slashdot at -1, in fact, and you're absolutely correct.
Thanks for presuming that I am unfamiliar with the Internet, but your contention is incorrect. One's real ID is certainly traceable in most instances from an online posting, given the proper court authority and technology.
Also, we do have some form of ID on Slashdot. Mine's "Sunburnt (890890)". When you read a post and see my ID at the top, you might recall previous posts of mine and think, "Hey, this guy's usually pretty sharp and probably onto something here, I should credit this more than most other posts" or "Hey, this guy's usually a total jackass and is probably lying about everything in this post." On the other hand, if I post anonymously, you can't even look at my comment history to make such a determination. The concept of anonymity can be applied to varying degrees in diverse situations.
How did you get that conviction out of my comments? I'm a bit too misanthropic to ever expect such a thing.
RTFA. The plaintiffs are specifically alleging material damages as a result of the posts in question. If anyone in this situation needs to adjust their credibility detectors, it's probably the hiring managers who apparently take this sort of juvenile shit-slinging seriously. (Not hard to believe, given their profession.)
Parent
you're completely wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
how does it affect you materially? juvenile snarky commentary about your sexuality affects you materially? are you a prostitute? if i say something negative about your tits on the internet, that's going to affect your job as a lawyer?! how?
now let's say some hypothetical retarded hiring manager is just as juvenile as one of the posters, and it DOES aff
Re:From TFA: (Score:5, Interesting)
If you started slandering me in public, I can identify at least which physical person is doing so, and probably get a police officer to tell you to quit disturbing the peace.
Not the point. The point is that you can be apprehended - a body can be associated with its speech. Posting anonymously on the Internet is more like leaving a boom box with a slanderous recording in the public square: while the speaker may ultimately be identified, it's immeasurably harder.
You must have been watching a "Jeeves and Wooster" marathon.
Sorry, but you're just plain wrong. Unless you go to greater lengths to concel the place from where you're posting, the FBI or Secret Service can certainly find you from an anonymous post if you're noticed and deemed a possible threat worth investigating.
I wonder how much time you must spend on the Internet to be unable to recognize the differences between a physical and an online presence?Parent
Could a program slander you ? (Score:2)
The web is becoming laden with the same (Score:2)
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Are you kidding? It's still always September on U****t.
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Oh, no use hiding that one. They've already found us here.
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i'ts like a school project for them (Score:2, Insightful)
hey ladies: random pointless negative asocial retards is pretty much par for the course on internet posting boards, especially when done anonymously. if you post with any regularity on the intertubes, you will get trolled, violently and personal
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what did the juvenile snarky comments say? (Score:2)
1. a company that the woman doesn't really want to work for. if the hiring manager is that stupid, do you really want to work for a company that puts someone that ignorant in the position of hiring manager?
2. a company you could happily sue if it was because of that reason that they weren't hired. and these women have shown they have no problem suing over litt
They are hurting themselves more with this lawsuit (Score:2)
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Or as I say, never attribute to bigotry, what can be explained by misanthropy.
On a more serious note, Dahlia Lithwick on Slate wrote an article [slate.com] that may be of interest here, about how female law students
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond that, threatening to rape and sodomize som
Phew (Score:5, Funny)
Wow.. so did it work?
If not, they gotta try to post the Internet summons in the form of a "IT'S NOT A JOKE. YOU WON. CLICK HERE TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE" banner. Maybe throw in a "FREE TRIP!!!" next to it.
That works. Every time.
Why would law firms read this stuff anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can someone please explain to me why allegedly prestigious law firms would use anonymous and clearly libelous postings as any sort of basis to decide whether to employ someone? Especially when many of the comments appear to be unrelated to legal ability (breast size, sexual orientation etc).
Surely, if these women are indeed excellent graduates, they will have completely non-anonymous references from prestigious law professors saying so. Why would a potential employer need anything else.
Perhaps this problem could best be solved by some sort of automated system which publishes random derogatory comments about all law graduates. Then, these law firms would not be able to employ any new graduates and would eventually go out of business!!
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Re:Why would law firms read this stuff anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, in the real world, most people applying for jobs, especially for nice jobs at big companies, have to compete with many other people with very similar qualifications. A manager might see some of these defamatory comments (some of which, according to the article, were work related) and decide not to bother with you because they have five other candidates without that baggage. That seems to be what happened in this case.
I'm not saying I agree with this as a hiring practice, by the way. I think it's bullshit, and you wouldn't catch me doing it if I were in a position to hire someone. It's unquestionable that it does happen out there, though.
Parent
Un-moderated board flame war.. (Score:3, Interesting)
In the new day, insulting comments have greater than a 15 mile range and are still there days/weeks/months later. It's harder to catch the abuser and the damage is greater. The AC bully is still with us. IP logging helps some.
There is a disconnect from the abuser and the victem. The victem sees just the grafiti on the forum and does not have the advantage of the raw transmission to obtain the source data such as login info and IP address. That is why that abuse info has to be required from the site owner if it was ever logged.
Online humiliation of posting an abusers IP address doesn't have the same impact as announcing a radio abuser's street address. I had more than one online radio bully call my DF bluff and had the misfortune to find out I wasn't bluffing. When that realisation became clear, he tried keying on the top of me. I was very patient and simply re-broadcast when he un-keyed. After 40 minutes, he went silent in defeat.
Unfortunately, the only way to clean up the mess is either moderation, or validation. Un-moderated forum space permitting anonymous posting is a bully's paridise. A flame war can quickly fry the place. It has spilled into the legal system. I don't post on un-moderated boards.
Privacy is no right to commit wrong (Score:2)
The justification for privacy is simple: prevention of prejudice. But it is a shield against unfair blows, not a tank where you can launch attacks from protection.
Anonymity has some tradition (Federalist Papers) and protection in the US. But
Cosmic justice - needs volunteer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then figure out who that pseudonym belongs to. Offer a reward of 10 paypal bucks, an i-five, you know - stupid schwagg that should be more than enough to out the guy by his acquaintances, who undoubtedly also think he's an asshole. Confirm it of course, as best as you're able - maybe get a few pics of the guy along with his schedule, a pic of him taking a pic of one of his targets would be funny as hell, and then come back to Slashdot with the results. A "Hall of assholes who post on AutoAdmit".
Guaranteed those dicks will have a hard time getting a job (or staying in law school if some of those comments are to be believed). And it's not really actionable since all you did was tie his anonymous pseudonym to his real name (again, you'd need a really solid source for who he is), and by God, you didn't promise him any such anonymity.
Now I know, we'd all be in trouble if someone did this to us (for example, my own essays on the transcendent joy of seeing goatse...
I just wasted 15 minutes and still have no opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
After reading Jill's own words, seeing what she was exposed to, I understand her frustration. I can't empathize because I'm not female and subjected to constant oogling, but I can sympathize if she feels wronged. Obviously she does because she is suing. Obviously, as a law student, she realizes the consequences and did more than just spout, "IAMNAL, but blah blah blah" like most people would. If she felt scorned, she knows the suit will increse the actions of the unjust. Hence the really vile emails and comments she is now getting. I don't care how bad a person is or isn't, no one deserves to be called "a diseased AIDS infected cum bucket..."
On the other hand, these are just idiots posting on a message board similar to ours. I wish all boards had our moderation (and meta-moderate). Would it stop it? Nah, but I can decide on days with little time to read the meat (read 2+), or on days with not much to do see the "nice rack" comments (reading -1) which of course would make me pull up the pics since I'm def interested in any pics described in that manner
So where does that leave us? A meager attempt by the law to do what's possibly moral in the eyes of a few. We know they got it dead wrong with DMCA, but right with attempted murder. Yes, I picked extremes, but you can see my point. Morally, is it wrong and they should be sued for calling her what they did? I guess if you had to nail me to the wall one way or the other, I'd say I agree with Jill. Yeah, it makes me uncomfortable agreeing with anyone who associates with variations of the word "feminist" but she might also be using it in a different construct/context. The reason I am comfortable is that free speech has responsible constraints. If you disagree, post a very public attack on $cientology with personal info about yourself, and then tell me in 6 months how you feel. I have a feeling you'll think Jill might have a point.
Interesting Question (Score:3, Interesting)
So if a website is purposefully not logging IPs to avoid identifying anonymous posters, and they receive such a notice, does failure to start logging IPs count as failing to preserve material with possible evidentiary value?