One, while there is a perceived level of privacy in cyberspace, the perception is false. In fact, every key stroke is being archived somewhere.

As was noted in a previous post, the blogger signed away his or her privacy when he/she pressed the “Accept” button when creating her blog. Read the fine print, people.

Also, as noted, the free-wheeling cyber-community is not immune from libel, defined as the publishing of any false information which harms an otherwise private citizen. When someone is a public figure, like the model in question, the legal standard is much higher in proving libel. The threshold is called “actual malice”. Actual malice is defined as information published which is deliberately false, or published with a gross disregard for whether the information was true or false. By the way, the harm does not have to be financial in nature. The act itself is humiliating to the victim and therefore harmful.

Truth is an absolute defense against libel, but a private person may be libelously harmed by the truth when, for example, they are singled out for scorn, such as images of obese people shown on a tv newscast about heart disease, without their permission.

Finally, the case points out the incredible vitriol that people feel free to use when hiding behind a screen name. If people were forced to use their own true identities, would they every resort to this crass and low behavior?

Discuss! By the way, I’m not a lawyer.

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/rnr/1333933080.html

I am not so sure the court did the wrong thing. Skank and ho are particular accusations that could have ruinous consequences for a fashion model. It could limit your ability to represent particular brands. From little lies big lies grow.

But…

My favorite part of the whole thing is had the model let it go, it would have faded away. But now, Google the model & it’ll turn up her name and ‘skank’ – forever linking her to this regardless of context.

runs off to gmail and blogger to test out theory

I was able to go to gmail.com, create an email account with no connection to me, and I was further able to create a blog on blogger without anything other than the above created gmail address. If queried, Google wouldn’t be able to find me without resolving IP addresses and working with my ISP to determine which account had that IP address at that time. If I were serious about hiding myself, a quick jaunt to the public library, coffe shop or other place with free wi-fi and I am hidden.

I guess they don’t cover such things at FIT…

But let me also point something out: this is cyberbullying on behalf of the fashion student, and it’s not cool, and I would 100 times prefer than no one get to be anonymous on the internet than we choose to do nothing about cyberbullying – even between adults, where we otherwise expect them to “just get over it.”

so good it had to be repeated.

Only works if they “unpublish” before the court order.

Benefits notwithstanding, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs and anonymous free speech on the Internet is one such omlette. There is no such thing as free speech, there is always a cost. Sometimes that cost is acceptable, moreover desirable, particularly in the case of positive community awareness. But often their many false and deceptive rumors, and libelous attacks are motivated only by hatred and vindictive antisocial promptings. More often than not, these serial cyber defamers have some type of antisocial personality disorder. They have nothing better to do than hurt other people, in fact they are actually fueled by other people’s pain. Normal people like 97% of the readers of my comment cannot begin to relate to how these people think. Stop for a moment and imagine not having a conscience….. is simply impossible.

A concerted, focused and malicious Internet smear campaign can be as devastating for a person that relies on his or her reputation for employment as a fire can be for a farmer who loses his fields, barns, and livestock.

Respectfully submitted by Michael Roberts. Internet Libel Victim’s Advocate.

a) gotten DNS hosting from a foreign reg service.
b) hosted her own server, or bought service outside of the US.
c) expected every link in the chain of control leading back to her to be compromised anyways, and act accordingly in advance.

The Internet isn’t as anonymous as many people would like to believe, and big companies aren’t as altruistic as they say they are. She just found out that little truth a little more painfully than others.

Again, the test is to imagine that some large interest you’ve happened to offend — Big Pharma, perhaps, or Wal-Mart, or the National Pork Producers Council — is using their vast resources to do it to you.

Google should be more responsible about not infringing people’s rights to free speech. When handed that court order, they should have counter-sued. Since they didn’t, now they are liable for tons of damages for revealing an identity that wasn’t even theirs to reveal. I hope that they end up having to pay Port the $15 mil, so that they can realize that defending people’s rights is more cost-effective in the long run. Money talks!

BTW Liskula Cohen is a skank and a ho for undermining the basic rights and freedoms of her fellow Americans.

My favorite part of the whole thing is had the model let it go, it would have faded away. But now, Google the model & it’ll turn up her name and ‘skank’ – forever linking her to this regardless of context.

Ynfg gvzr V cbvagrq gung bhg gb fbzrbar, fur fhrq zr.

Maggie Koerth-Baker @39:

To me, this is less of a personal privacy story and more a story about the ongoing struggle to hash out what, exactly, the legal status of bloggers is.

IMO, it should be the same as any other publication’s, with just a couple of differences. First, in the absence of demonstrable physical or economic harm, there should be a fairly strict limit on the damages a large, powerful, or wealthy entity can collect from a very small one. Second, it should be made a lot easier for a small entity to countersue, get their costs repaid, etc., if they’re hit with a SLAPP lawsuit.

I don’t think new media ought to be able to attack from behind a bulletproof shield of personal privacy or anonymity simply by virtue of being new media.

Neither do I. In fact, I don’t think anyone should be able to launch anonymous attacks or distribute disinformation for fraudulent or malicious ends.

I know the internet has picked up the habit of casual pseudonymity, but I don’t think that can endure. If the discourse of the internet is real, then real people must be responsible for it. I have great sympathy for anonymous whistleblowers, but for every real whistleblower, I see thirty or forty incidents of astroturfing, and the latter is becoming commoner, better-funded, and more sophisticated every day.

As usual, I’m in favor of rule of law precisely because I’m one of the little guys.

What’s a ‘skank’ or a ‘ho’ anyway? I looked them up in a book with words and definitions and couldn’t find either.

Takuan, anonymity in the hands of powerful bad guys would be a terrible thing.

How would you strip anonymity from “powerful bad guys” and keep it for others?

Sacrificing your rights to buy safety is exactly what Ben Franklin was talking about. One of the issues in Ben’s time was the quartering of British Soldiers in your house, eliminating any privacy for the homeowner…

Rights apply to everyone, at least that’s how I was taught in school.

..if you’re a woman. Because, well, standards are.

“First they came for the bitchy fashion students…” is a great summary. I wish that was the first and only thing I’ve read about this.

This is the worst type of libel/slander under the law.

That means you don’t need to prove malice on the part of the person who published the libel, and you don’t need to cite specific damages. General damages are OK.

“…The more obvious of the two, libel per se, means“by itself” or “on the face of it.” The reader or viewerdoes not have to interpret or study in order to understandthe libel per se because it is obvious or evident. Libelper se is the more serious of the two types, and personslibeled in this manner do not have to prove that theysuffered damage to their reputations, monetary loss orother injury. Libel per se can support a lawsuit in itself…”

http://www.tpub.com/content/photography/14130/css/14130_175.htm