California Appeals Court Supports Right To Anonymous Posting
from the another-good-ruling dept
While in other countries, courts have been much more willing to reveal anonymous online writers when someone feels someone dislikes the content, US courts have been a lot more willing to protect online anonymity. Here's yet another example. In California, an appeals court ruled that an anonymous poster on Yahoo's finance message boards could remain anonymous despite agreeing that the content was "unquestionably offensive and demeaning." However, as the court notes, offensive and demeaning content isn't illegal -- and thus the poster has every right to protect his or her anonymity. This is definitely a good ruling. All too often people assume that just because they don't like some content or feel offended by it, it must be illegal. It's good to be reminded that just because you dislike something, it's not necessarily illegal.
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Illegal by Old Guy on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 8:37am
Yeah, otherwise most of the current senate, house, and white house would be against the law
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Anonymous by Old Guy on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 8:38am
Would also make any of Anonymous' postings here impossible
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more importantly by ehrichweiss on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 8:40am
The thing we often forget is that the right to offend is much more important than the right to not be offended.
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by Anonymous Coward on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 8:46am
And yet this site has revealed descriptive information of people that have opposed your view. Interesting, could be a slippery slope happening here.
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Re: more importantly by Anonymous Coward on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 9:05am
and the right to split infinitives is inalienable
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Re: by Anonymous Coward on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 9:06am
It doesn’t mean that your identity can’t be discovered; just the courts are not going to assist in the discovery process...
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Re: Re: by Hulser on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 9:59am
Exactly. The privacy policies of a privately held web site are a far cry away from the government having the ability to force someone's identity to be revealed. And revealing "descriptive information" is yet another far cry away from actually revealing an individual's anonymous identity. So the incident to which first commenter refers is so far away from relevent that it can't even be said to be on the same slope.
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by Anonymous Coward on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 10:26am
Others might refer to that as hypocrisy.
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The same rules do not apply by Ehren E. Turner on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 10:38am
The law protects anonymity as long as nothing illegal is being said, which shouldn't be any surprise. However, whether something is illegal can be contingent on anonymity. For instance, if someone were to anonymously post "I'm going to kill my husband" the only way to turn their anonymous statement into a meaningful, illegal statement, would be to discover who they are. Otherwise, the threat might be meaningless. She may not be married. A worse example: suppose someone were to write, "I'm going to shoot up my school." They might be serious, or they might not even be a student (not that it would make any difference if they weren't). All kinds of merely offensive statements might actually be illegal when viewed in context- even if they were never intended to be viewed that way. So, on one hand, it's clear that law should not protect illegal *forms* of speech. Here's what worries me. If a judge deems a statement to *possibly* be threatening- thus illegal- anonymity ceases to be protected under the 1st Amendment. The law doesn't actually protect anyone from being investigated. We still have to be civilized.
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Re: The same rules do not apply by Anonymous Coward on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 12:05pm
I think there's a fallacy here; I'm not sure what offensive language is being protected here, but I think there's a large difference between offensive and threatening violence. To say, "you're really dumb," is very different from, "I'm going to hunt you down and kill you."
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by Anonymous Coward on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 12:17pm
The court didn't really so much uphold anonymous posting as it did uphold our right to do things that aren't illegal and refuse to get involved in things that aren't any of it's business. Mike, you're an asshat for that deliberately misleading article title.
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Re: by Danny on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 12:49pm
Hypocrisy isn't illegal. Neither is being a whiner, a douchebag, or a calamari hosebeast.
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by Wayne on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 2:00pm
Calamari Doucebag...lol
Even anonymous posting isn't entirely anonymous though. What about your IP address? Sure, there are ways around that, and the people that we should be worried about would probably have that in mind anyway, so i guess I'm not really adding much here.
At the end of the day, our rights are being slowly, ever so slowly stripped from us, and we're allowing it to happen. We need to protest and fight the government that plans to keep us under their thumb. We the people own the government, not the other way around. I just hope we never forget that.
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by Anonymous Coward on Feb 7th, 2008 @ 2:56pm
We own the govt? Really, not if you are a democrat. Think the people of Michigan were heard in their primary? How about their "Super Delegate" they have going, where Obama could win the primaries but the party bosses decide that Hillary should be their candidate.
Why the hell would anyone be a democrat? They slap their own members in the face.
Right now I support Obama. If the democratic party screws the people, I will never vote for a democrat for the rest of my life.
What the hell was this article about again?
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