California Court: Only Reveal Anonymous Commenters If They're The People This Guy Thinks They Are
from the too-clever? dept
We’ve been discussing a lot of different cases involving anonymity of online commenters lately, and Sam Bayard has the details on a case in California where the judge appears to have come up with a (too?) clever solution to the question of protecting anonymity. Rather than directly reveal the commenters, the judge says that the guy who wants to know their identity can hire an independent third party (at the guy’s own expense) who will get the IP addresses and investigate the identities. But, he also has to provide that third party with a list of names who he thinks are responsible. If the names associated with the IP addresses match up with the names on the list, they’ll be revealed. If not, the commenters remain anonymous.
Now, the details of this particular case are quite a bit different than the typical cases involving anonymous commenters. Specifically, most such cases involve people pissed off at the commenters and wishing to sue them. In this case, the guy (Calvin Chang) is involved in an employment discrimination/breach of contract dispute with UC Davis, and believes some of the commenters on a certain blog post (about his case) work for the university and posted details that prove a breach of an earlier settlement. So, he’s not looking to sue them, but wants to use their identities as evidence in his ongoing case.
Thus, you can sort of understand where the judge is coming from. The identities themselves don’t matter at all if they’re not employed by the university. But if they are among those employed by the university and prove that the university breached an agreement, then suddenly their identities could be more important. Still, I tend to think that unless the person suing can present full evidence of a violation, the right to anonymity should prevail.
Filed Under: anonymity
Comments on “California Court: Only Reveal Anonymous Commenters If They're The People This Guy Thinks They Are”
What's in a Name?
So all they need to do is compile a text format of all the phone books in the United States, filter out duplicates and present it as the limiting list. There’s a flying Squirrel here who has a comment on this method of ‘protection.’ H doesn’t seem very hopeful….
“Chang will provide the third party with the names of the specific university personnel believed to have posted the comments;”
He can only do that if he can show everybody in the United States are relevant to the case, I don’t think he’ll do very well if he tries that 🙂
Kind of makes you glad that you use a proxy server whenever you post 🙂
A third party will have no authority to demand information on the IP address to the ISP … this makes no sense?
Re: Re:
They probably do if the court orders the ISP to turn over the information to the third party. Not a lawyer, but I would guess that’s how it would work.
Re: Re:
I don’t know TONS about this, but even without authority, I’m guessing some old-fashioned investigative work could turn up some names.
Re: Re: Re:
I don’t know TONS about this, but even without authority, I’m guessing some old-fashioned investigative work could turn up some names.
why would you hire an investigator when you can just trample people’s civil liberties instead?
Real life Hasbro Game!
Does your person have blonde hair?
No.
Not bernard, not susan, could be Chris but it could also be Kelly and Walter…
Do I ask if they have a big nose or glasses… oh man I’m so close!
If the Third Party were a private investigation group with the authority provided by law to gain a warrant than perhaps this might work. Some issues do arise however.
First: Getting the proper laws and organizations in place.
This could take quite some time. Is the lawsuit willing to wait?
Second: Who is in charge of ensuring they do not get out of hand?
A group like this could be used instead of lawsuits to gain immediate access to ISP’s and Identities, providing a loophole to needing proper working of law in regards to the internet.
Third: How far does their authority extend?
If the ISp is out of state can they have jurisdiction? If so that is worrisome all the more.
Forth: How many Identities are they allowed to provide and once they try are they allowed to try again?
If they are allowed unlimited or even large amounts of Identities, this part of the idea is pointless as mentioned earlier. Multiple attempts allowed is essentially the same thing.
Fifth: Once information has been gathered what is done with it?
A firm is hired, they gather an ISP, the Identities match, then what? All that is handed back over?
I think they should be required to give up no more than the Identity and that only in front of a judge.
A firm is hired, they gather an ISP, the Identities DO NOT match, then what? NOTHING SHOULD BE GIVEN BACK EXCEPT NO RESULTS AND ALL INFORMATION PERTAINING TO ISP’S AND IDENTITIES GAINED DESTROYED. THE LIST PROVIDED FROM THE HIRING SOURCE THEN HANDED OVER TO THE OVERSIGHT PEOPLE TO ENSURE LIBEL IS NOT BEING DONE.