A byte-stained publishing wretch of an FBvian has some experience with people demanding the identities of bloggers and Internet posters.
Anon folks have been sued before based on their Internet activity. A vendor I cover in the trades sued anonymous message board posters on my Website back in 2005. Link. They asked me to reveal the names of the posters. Oh, how we laughed and laughed. The case was dropped in March ’06.
Demanding in a lawsuit is one thing, of course. A court order is another. His didn’t come to that. But there was a notable point made in the story he links.
One thing a lawsuit mentioning a media company won’t do, experts say, is lessen the amount of attention such message board posts are likely to generate. “It seems sure to backfire if the intention was to silence their critics,” says Jeff Ferrell, professor of criminal justice at TCU.
Good point. It certainly won’t keep people from linking to blogs like the one in Paris that’s the target of this lawsuit. Right here. This one. Click.
