CDR: another judge farts: anonymous speech
David Honig
honig at sprynet.com
Tue Oct 17 09:12:30 PDT 2000
Anonymous Net Posting Not
Protected
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Internet-Defamation.html
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:29 p.m. ET
MIAMI (AP) -- In a ruling that challenges online
anonymity, a Florida appeals court declared Monday
that Internet service providers must divulge the
identities of people who post defamatory messages on
the Internet.
Critics of the ruling say it could have a chilling effect
on free expression in Internet chat rooms.
The ruling comes against the efforts of the American
Civil Liberties Union to protect the identity of eight
individuals who posted anonymous missives on a
Yahoo! financial chat room about Erik Hvide, the
former CEO of Hvide Marine Inc.
Hvide alleges that personal attacks against him also
caused damage to the company's image.
Hvide's attorney Bruce Fischman hailed the ruling,
saying it would force Internet users to ``think a bit
before they speak.''
The ACLU had wanted the court first to rule on whether
Hyde had actually been defamed before identifying the
defendants, named in court papers only as John Doe. If
there was no showing of defamation, the ACLU
reasoned, the critics should remain anonymous.
However, on Thursday, the court dissolved a stay
freezing subpoenas for the records of Yahoo! Inc. and
America Online Inc., whose service was used by one of
the defendants in the defamation case.
Lauren Gelman, public policy director with the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, is concerned that other
courts could follow the lead of the 3rd District Court of
Appeals in approving subpoenas.
``This kind of speech happens all the time in all kinds
of chat rooms,'' Gelman said. ``We don't want to see
these subpoenas become regularly used to cause people
to self-censor themselves.''
Both Internet companies took a back seat in the lawsuit,
saying they would do whatever the judges said.
Lyrissa Lidsky, who argued the case on behalf of the
ACLU, called the decision a surprise and a setback.
Nevertheless, she said, ``It's not a defeat for all the
other John Does in the pipeline'' fighting
Internet-related subpoenas because the court did not
explain its legal reasoning.
An appeal is being explored.
``The court had the potential to set an important
precedent about the right to speak anonymously on the
Internet,'' Lidsky said. ``The courts are eventually going
to have to come to grips with this issue and decide how
broad free speech rights are in cyberspace.''
The issue is largely untested in the nation's courts.
A Virginia federal judge sided with a government
subpoena request in a criminal case, but civil suits in
California and Virginia have not settled the subpoena
questions involving anonymous Internet users.
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