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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Courts - "Judge rules blogger's identity must be revealed"; differing viewpoints

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press site has this brief story:

A blogger lost his bid to keep his identity secret after a judge in New York City ruled that a fashion model had established a legitimate defamation claim against the blogger.

Establishing a legitimate underlying claim is necessary under New York rules of discovery before a subpoena to reveal an anonymous speaker will be enforced, according to the court.

The blogger had created a site called "Skanks in NYC," and had featured model Liskula Cohen in several postings. One posting labelled her a "psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank."

The blogger had argued that the comments should be understood as opinion and hyperbole, and thus not stating anything factual that could be the subject of a libel claim.

But Judge Joan Madden disagreed. The use of the words as captions to "sexually provocative" photographs of the model reinforce the sexual overtones of the words, Madden held, and thus "the words 'skank,' 'skanky' and 'ho' carry a negative implication of sexual promiscuity, and as such as resonably susceptible of a defamatory connotation and are actionable."

Because Cohen had established the basis for a libel suit, the judge ordered Google, which had hosted the blog through its blogger.com site, to reveal the identity of the blogger.

The RCFP also provides a link to the trial court's decision.

ABC's Good Morning Amercia had a feature on this ruling this morning, told from the model's point of view. Here is the accompanying story by Rich McHugh and Noel Hartment, headed "Model Liskula Cohen Wins Court Battle with Google to Learn Blogger's Identity."

Here are some RCFP links to earlier stories on anonymous commenters. The ILB also has been following this topic. A search for the word "anonymous" will turn them up (unfortunately along with a number of unrelated entries containing the word.)

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 19, 2009 10:04 AM
Posted to Courts in general