It's probably !HN, but I'd be interested in how many people read this as "Guess based on simulations forces Google to reveal..." versus how many read it as "Person paid (well) to wear clothes (barely) forces Google to reveal..."
I agree with this ruling. While I think privacy is important, the anonymity of the internet can bring out the worst in people. I think you should be held responsible for your actions, and once we start doing that with the internet I think you'll see a reduction in abuse.
Of course you'll get loads of frivolous lawsuits as well...
Libel is libel. Why should someone have free reign to publish untrue statements about another person with no fear of repercussion? Your reputation plays an enormous role in both your professional and personal life, and you should have the ability to protect it.
The court, in this case, required that they show evidence of libel (which they did) before compelling google to hand over the blogger. I think this ruling is an outstanding one. Speech can be damaging, and folks who engage in libelous or slanderous speech deserve what they get.
It is my understanding that libel is only libel if you are aware that it is a lie. If the blogger was honestly convinced that this women was a skank, then the blogger would be be guilty of defamation...
it's only defamation if it's not true; it's only defaming if it is, which sounds like a truism.
If I claim someone is a drug-addled buffoon, that may be defaming, if that person is Ozzy Osbourne, then his corpus of work speaks directly to that conclusion and only the most highly paid lawyers would bother to argue that description defamed him.
I'm not so sure about that. While this case seems obvious bloggers in Germany on the other hand are required by law to publish their identity and real life street address.
This way many people are afraid to publish articles that might be controversial.
Some already have been attacked by fascists or been shut up by lawyers.
Not to mention China of course where blog publishers have to register with authorities.
As long as they work for a publication that has a real address of their office it's enough.
When they operate a blog or website on their own they also have to publish a so called imprint including an address (which might be an office address though).
Journalists and everybody else working from home have no choice for their sites and blogs.
I'm not recommending German or Chinese systems as a solution. What I believe is that tossing around insults, defamation, etc. anonymously is cowardly and should not be tolerated by our society. Make people stand behind their words. I think you can tackle one problem without creating the other.
So how do you solve the problem the parent mentioned? What stops an extremist organisation from suing to get the identity (legally), accidentally slip it and let others smash his windows? It's not a theoretical point of view, this happened in many times and many countries.
Anonymous insults and defamation don't have nearly as much power as the scenario above.
I live in a country where a government meeting transcripts were leaked, and on their way passed through a regular joe. He got detained, his computer confiscated, and most scary, two years after the incident I still couldn't find the transcripts online. The incident was widely publicized - but the files were still gone. (I'm from Romania btw, an ex-communist country. You'd think we'd know better.)
And more to the point, wikileaks would be impossible.
You stop it by compelling (as they did in this case) proof of a libelous claim. Anonymous speech, as long as it doesn't cross the line into destruction of reputation based on false statements is still protected.
Mm. This works on paper, true. But in the real world the proof necessary to get the identity is much lower then the one needed to actually convict. Add to this the fact that libelous claims are in good part a subjective matter. Nope, proof of a libelous claim would merely make the above scenario somewhat more difficult, but far from improbable. It would simply require better lawyers.
So now we need to solve a problem in the legal system?
Doesn't it get to a point where you can't solve any problems because of the other systems they're tied to?
How about we just agree from a moral perspective that:
1. Anonymous defamation etc. is cowardly and should be persecuted appropriately.
2. Maintaining reasonable privacy is something we should strive for, and that it should be just as important as #1.
3. A legal system needs to be in place that we can trust to maintain both #1 and #2.
Those are our requirements. Now I'm not saying we're going to solve it right here and now, but thinking about it this way, as a problem requiring a solution and not a big wall we can't get past, definitely isn't going to hurt.
