Should the anonymity of cyberbullies be protected?

I don't think they should be, and if they're attacking someone on the internet then they should be treated the same as if they were doing it in the print media or talking face to face with other people. This article I'm going to post is one I totally agree with:



Cyberbullies don't deserve anonymity


This week, a New York state supreme court judge ruled that Google (owners of Blogger.com) must turn over the electronic identity of an anonymous blogger who repeatedly attacked New York model Liskula Cohen, calling her "a psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank", among other things, on a blog titled "Skanks in NYC". Because Cohen has grounds to sue the blogger for defamation, the court ordered Google to cough up a name to allow her to fill in the "defendant" blank. Naturally, this has some of the more libertarian-minded among us crying, "Censorship!" and "What about freedom of speech?" and "Will they be coming for my anonymous blog next?"

What those people forget is that defamation laws were around in some form long before the US constitution was written. Freedom of speech is all well and good – and believe me, I'm a big fan – but slander is not protected. This is not news. And if your insults come up high in search engine results for your target, affecting her reputation and employability, a lawsuit should not come as a big shock.

As for the hand-wringing about privacy, I hate to be the one to break it to the internet, but that horse is out of the barn. As Peter Cohen writes at All Things Digital, "Every time you use the internet, you're leaving a trail of identifiable information." Or, as my husband, an internet marketing professional who's been active in online communities for nearly 20 years, put it, "Anyone who thinks they're actually anonymous is a complete moron."

Yet all over the web, people operating under the illusion that their identities are thoroughly hidden continue to prove John Gabriel's famous theory of internet behaviour: Normal person + anonymity + audience = total prat. And too often, particularly when it comes to misogynistic attacks that not only harm women's public reputations but drive them away from participating in online communities, citizens of the internet side with the prats. People become obsessed with hypothetical legal arguments about freedom of speech – even the kind of speech that's never been protected – to the exclusion of looking at a larger, more important question: What kind of internet culture do we want?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/aug/20/blog-anonymity

No reasonable person would take literally an anonymous blog accusing a model of "whoring," and so that doesn't violate laws against defamation.

The judge was wrong to remove the blogger's anonymity when the lawsuit is so weak.

and got exactly nowhere.

You'd think if someone gets your cancer surgery cancelled, there would be a there there.

To have someone's surgery cancelled is on a whole different and far more dangerous level than defaming someone on the internet. Whoever did that to a cancer patient is one hell of a sick individual who deserves to be arrested...

how to deal with it. Our only remedy would have been to pay a 10K retainer to an attorney and more to a techie to help us track down evidence. It wasn't possible. But, I imagine that there is a criminal element like the people who did that to Andy who do exploit the gap between what law enforcement can take on and what people can afford to pursue on their own.

Stalking, eg, is a crime in real life, and many states have now added cyber stalking to their laws since they have received so many complaints from people over the past number of years.

Jerry Brown about Andy's case. Not to move it, the family doesn't want that. But as an object lesson. :hi:

what happened to him. If that were to happen now, I do think something would have been done. I think people lose their right to anonymity when they cross lines into real life, as happened in his case.

People are opposed, and rightly imo, to government interference with people's right to remain anonymous, but the blame for forfeiting that right is not on the victims of bullies and stalkers, it is on the perpetrators.

People like Kathy Sierra eg, drew a line in the sand when it came to the anonymous cowards who stalked her for so long. And more and more people, as the internet grows and newer users are shocked at some of what they see, are doing the same thing they would do in real life, reporting abuse.

Andy's case was so sad and a perfect example of when it would be appropriate for someone to stop it. I don't blame his family though for not wanting to pursue it at this point.

Online threats like "shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you" are not unheard of since AOL and Prodigy popularized the public forum. Calling someone on the phone and saying that would be quite different. Even if it doesn't take the form of a direct threat it's the equivalent of "I know where you live." which is actually a fairly serious threat.

many cyberstalking laws are poorly drawn, overbroad, and even unconstitutional.

WA state's law (where i work) is currently being challenged and imo IS unconstitutional.

it comes down to this - bullying , name calling, and stating opinion is not slander. so, in the case of "bullying", the answer is no. in the case of actual stalking or defamation, i would answer yes. it is correct that the internet doesn't mean there is some kind of "right" to anonymity. there isn't. not in the real world, or on the internet (well , apart from being a source for a journalist but i digress)

If I think that a certain local businessman and GOP operative is someone I should keep an eye on, in hopes of catching him doing something that will take him down, then clearly a stalking law might be able to be applied to my activities. Some people think that my penchant for doing internet research on everyone who comes into my life is stalking. I check people out, especially if they have access to my family. I don't like surprises.

and like i said, many stalking laws which are often kneejerk and/or overreaching response in the :"war on domestic violence" ARE overbroad and unconstitutional.

generally speaking, a person should be (and is) free to observe others as long as he does it from a place where he has a legal right to be (whether private or public property).

They repeatedly attacked the reputation of that woman, and if it had been done away from the internet and in real life, the person doing it wouldn't have anonymity to hide behind. What the judge decided was there was a need for the personal details of the anonymous blogger to be handed over, as without those details no legal action could be taken against the culprit....

NT

thats why she won. this blogger created the blog specifically to attack this particular woman.

NT

NT

NT

Have you ever tried or defended a defamation case?

NT

It depends upon how "bullying" is defined.

What I do know is that failure to define it adequately will lead to all kinds of suits being filed against boards like this and posters like us. So I think it's rather important to define.

from anonymous cyber bullies? Eg, if someone calls on the phone and issues a death threat, more than once, it is a crime. What would be different about doing that on the internet?

And btw, if someone doesn't want to be reported, how about they not engage in behavior that others will find disturbing enough to believe they may be in danger? There are consequences to behavior, even on the internets and the only person who can determine whether or not they feel threatened is the person being bullied.

One of the forms 'cyber-bullying' can take is threats of law-suits over behavior that is far from meeting the standards of defamation, but courts are often lax in weeding out at the gate baseless suits. Generally the object of this sort of thing is to invade privacy and subject persons to expense and other trouble. In this particular case, it sounds like the standards for defamation have been met, but if this case goes through, courts are quickly going to have to take some effort to strictly quash a flood of wholly base-less suits at the point of filing, measures that will probably have to extend to contempt judgements for repeated filings. There are people out there who are not well in the head....

Can you prosecute a homeless man who yells obscenities about your mother as you drive by? Of course not- because no one gives a shit what a homeless man thinks on any given subject, he has no credibility.

Liskula Cohen has no case against some anonymous BBS commenter unless that person is traveling under a famous name or is actually someone whose opinion matters. Even then, it's hard to imagine in the world of entertainment, where real life people often refer to others in their trade as whores, talentless, hacks, that there is a case to be made here. Unless of course Tom Cruise is alleging that Liskula Cohen is a Lesbian, then the courts might see some cause of action.

That might effect damages awarded, but not the finding of fact of whether the person committed slander or not. It is far from true that anonymous attacks cannot do harm to reputation.

It is also a year old, and describing a field of law that is rapidly changing, as the court decision in the article at the head of this thread makes clear. That decision is not the only recent legal excursion into suing persons for comments on the web. A real estate management firm in my city is suing a former tenant over a single sentence on 'Twitter', and doubtless there are other instances elsewhere. The firms who host comments are generally not held liable, but the persons who post them certainly can be, and the former are sometimes compelled to name the latter to plaintiffs.

her employability would be impacted by the statements in question, no matter how vile the comments may have been. If the person in question had deemed her unreliable or something work related, perhaps she'd have a legitimate case? But from what I know, under the circumstances the ruling teeters on a slippery slope.

On the other hand, I think this particular case could perhaps have fallen under the cyber-stalking category and as such been handled through other legal channels. The person in question could have remained anonymous until police finished an investigation and made a determination about any potential criminal activity.

Admittedly, I may be a bit partial when it comes to defending the right to internet anonymity. ;)

in favor of preserving the right to remain anonymous online. But the fact is, to answer your question regarding who gets to decide what is bullying, the target of the bullying decides. People who go online for the purpose of bullying others, or insulting or threatening others who have done them no harm, are taking advantage of the freedom to say whatever they want anonymously.


If they get their kicks out of doing this, as other weirdos have done on the phone or through the mail then they better be prepared for someone to decide they are not going to tolerate it, as has happened in this case.

This woman had enough. I doubt she cares about winning but I bet the anonymous cowardly bully has stopped harassing her

This is how we end up with all the laws most of us could do without. Irresponsible people abuse privileges, and some people decide they will not put up with their garbage and that leads to laws which affect all of us.

So, who should we be angry at? The bullies or those who won't tolerate them?

What if Bill O'Reilly decided that DU-ers were defaming him and as such he wanted our personal information?

I think we need more clearly defined laws in this regard. I do agree that the woman in question WAS victimized. I simply believe it was perhaps more of a criminal matter in this case than one that meets the criteria for defamation. The model is a limited public figure and as such there is a higher burden of proof required to prevail in any civil case. Also, the blog itself was said to be quite obscure. I don't know how she can prevail in a claim that she was harmed financially i.e. injured?

Edited to add, this is my unprofessional opinion. ;) I've not read the actual ruling.

But if you have been stalked online, and are not a public figure, it can be pretty frightening. It happens a lot, and seems to happen more to women for some reason. In a survey I read, many women have been driven off the internet because of fear of some of these people. That is how they handled it.

I agree the laws need to be clearly defined. O'Reilly goes after so many people himself, it would be difficult for him to whine about DUers going after him. It hasn't affected his ratings much, in fact, it probably drives them up.

But that is very different from some truly anonymous and not public person being harassed online. I think eventually the same laws that apply in real life will apply online. Critizing O'Reilly is not the same thing as threatening someone with death and if anyone threatened him with death, imo, they ought to be id'd also.

who tried to obtain my personal info through legal channels. This person never found me, but harassed people who he assumed were me. He posted photos of people with similar names, made phone calls (which he recorded and posted online). And according to one website, he even threatened my life. In my opinion, he stalked me with the help of the federal court system. Ultimately my case was won as I had stellar legal representation. But that does not mean the lawsuit (along with the public hunt for me) did not take a toll.

As I've said, I sympathize with the woman who was harassed in this case as well. But again, it's a slippery slope. Well have to see if there is an appeal in the case.

*You can see my profile for more info on my case if you like.*

I have read about this case as this is a subject I and others, some who were the victims of death threats and stalking have been interested in for a while now. I don't think it was the best case to illustrate WHEN a line has been crossed, but the model herself was obviously very disturbed by what happened and she decided to put a stop to it herself.

I have always been afraid of giving the government reasons to do as you say, find an excuse to go after people's identities in the name of protecting all of us.

But the reality is that most of us who have been around the internet for a while have become used to the threats and insults and learned how best to handle them. I know I have received plenty of threats mostly, though not only, from rightwingers during the early Bush years. I ignored them mostly.

But now, with so many more people online many totally unaccustomed to the general wild west atmosphere, law enforcement agencies, many of whom just a few years ago knew little about online 'crime' and tended to laugh off any reports they did get, are now being trained to handle these complaints, increasing daily I was told by friends in law enforcement. Most are not worth their time, but some they do take seriously.

I am sorry to hear of your experiences. I did check your profile and found a link to a pdf file. Is that what you meant? If so, I will read it.

I guess I've come to the conclusion that a line is crossed when someone stalks another person for a long period of time after being told to stop, and/or makes death threats. What people decide to do will depend on how threatened they feel, and no one but the 'victim' can determine that.

The risk for these online bullies now is that things have changed and more people are acting as they would if they received a threat or were stalked in real life, and law enforcement is responding to the demand for action.

I don't really know where I come down on all of this as I have changed my mind a little since the days not so long ago when I fought furiously against any laws governing the internet. But a case in Brooklyn a few years ago where two guys were fighting online and one threatened to kill the other and actually did, including airc, his young daughter, made me think twice about laughing off strangers issuing death threats online.

Thanks for your input. I think we probably agree. I am against over-lawed societies but criminals use the internet too. So, I'm still thinking about it :-)

by law enforcement, but this case is a civil matter, not a criminal one.

I can't say that my opinion would not mirror yours had I not experienced what I did. In my case, given I was protecting my identity I could not go after the person in question for any death threats. However, if he would have found out my identity, I'd have gone after him (and his supporters) with every legal tool available to me. Thankfully, the court decided in my case, that the criminal plaintiff did not have a legitimate case against me.

Peace :hi:

Good to see you though! :hi:

If someone had legitimate criticism of someone, they should own up to it and say it in public and stand behind their words. Otherwise it is probably just a bunch of lies.