1st AMENDMENT PROTECTS TROLLS FROM BEING TOSed FROM ISP, SUPREME COURT RULES

Excellent.



"*" *@*.* wrote in :

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...s-court-first-
amendment-protects-forum-trolls-too.html?

Anonymous trolls on the Internet are allowed to remain anonymous, a
judge in a California appeals court ruled yesterday. Not only that,
but
they're allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights and speak
their
minds, no matter how scathing their comments may be. The court opinion
reversed a previous decision that would have allowed Lisa Krinsky, COO
of a Florida-based drug service company, to subpoena 10 anonymous
Yahoo
message board posters' real names.


The story starts out like this. 10 anonymous individuals posted on
Yahoo's message boards in 2005 about Krinsky, her company (SFBC), and
two other officers at her company. These posters regularly made what
the
judge described as "scathing verbal
attacks" against these officers. This included referring to the trio
as
"a management consisting of boobs, losers and crooks," and with one
poster (Doe 6) describing Krinsky when he said "I will reciprocate
felatoin [sic] with Lisa even though she has fat thighs, a fake
medical
degree, 'queefs' and has poor feminine hygiene."

Krinsky left SFBC in December of 2005 and filed the lawsuit in January
of 2006, which Doe 6 attempted to quash. In April of 2006, a superior
court judge said that Doe 6 was "trying to drive down the price of
[plaintiff's] company to manipulate the stock
price, sell it short and so forth," according to court documents seen
by
Ars. The court also suggested that "[a]ccusing a woman of unchastity
[...] calling somebody a crook . . . saying that they have a fake
medical degree, accusing someone of a criminal act, accusing
someone—impinging [sic] their integrity to practice in their chosen
profession historically have been libel per se." The court then denied
Doe 6's motion to quash.

The appeals court acknowledged that the Wild West of the Internet is
still bound by rules about libel, and that especially in the corporate
and financial arena, people's reputations and entire companies can
suffer damages as rumors spread over the 'Net. Still, the judge ruled
that what Doe 6 had posted were not assertions of "actual fact" and
therefore not actionable under Florida's defamation law, despite being
"unquestionably offensive and demeaning." Therefore, Doe 6's
statements
are still protected under the First Amendment, and he is entitled to
all
costs involved in his appeal.

The decision comes just weeks after two Yale law students were dealt a
similar blow in their own case against anonymous forum bashers. They
had
filed a lawsuit against a number of anonymous posters on AutoAdmit.com
who were advocating that others physically assault, rape, and sodomize
them if at all possible. The two plaintiffs, however, were unable to
get
the IP addresses of these posters and have therefore been largely
unsuccessful in identifying them. While the attacks made by the
AutoAdmit posters may or may not be legally protected (they are
threats,
after all), we will likely never find out thanks to vigorous data
deletion policies.