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Yale Students' Lawsuit Unmasks Anonymous Trolls
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jul 31, 2008 03:02 PM
from the hate-is-such-an-ugly-word dept.
from the hate-is-such-an-ugly-word dept.
palegray.net writes "Two female Yale law school students have used the courts to ascertain the identities of otherwise anonymous posters to an Internet forum, with the intent of prosecuting them for hateful remarks left on the boards. At a minimum, the posters' future legal careers are certainly jeopardized by these events. While I'm not certainly not supporting or encouraging hateful speech online, these controversial actions hold potentially far-reaching consequences for Internet privacy policy and free speech." According to the linked Wired Law article, "The women themselves have gone silent, and their lawyers — two of whom are now themselves being sued — are not talking to the press."
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The posters deserve to be unmasked (Score:5, Informative)
These comments would not be tolerated in any other setting so why should they be tolerated online?
Re:The posters deserve to be unmasked (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The posters deserve to be unmasked (Score:5, Insightful)
This wouldn't be too bad if potential employers and romantic interests weren't so damn nosey -- imagine kicking ass in a job interview for a good position only to discover that you were turned down because your psychotic, jealous ex with a lot of time on their hands gamed Google(or created a fake MySpace page) and made you out to be a drunk, zoophile, or worse!
Dosen't matter if the incendiary posts were written by people called "HitlerHitlerHitler" and "GoatseFan1" -- the hiring manager may think, "Hmm, he/she sure does have a lot of enemies" or "I'd rather not have all that controversy attached to somebody who works for me." Same applies to potential romantic interests.
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Re:The posters deserve to be unmasked (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this points to how anonymity is *usually* used for evil
Really? C'mon... remember that next time you visit that medical web site to ask about that really embarrassing rash. You might want to be anonymous when inquiring about your options on terminating an unwanted pregnancy. You might also enjoy the anonymity when you visit those pr0n sites, when you criticize Scientology, when you're playing Unreal instead of working, when you visit that atheism web-site. When you bare your soul at an AA-type forum, you might not want your name on there. Or maybe you're blowing the whistle on your company's poisoning your town by publishing incriminating documents...
Anonymity on the Internet certainly has its downside, but I think it's one of the major features for why MANY millions of people use the Internet in the first place-- it can is a liberating, empowering experience to participate in open forums, chat rooms, etc. without fear of personal consequence. Yes, people say things that they would not say otherwise including libelous accusations and even threats... but I think the upside FAR outweighs the downside.
Posted anonymously, of course.
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Re:The posters deserve to be unmasked (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this points to how anonymity is *usually* used for evil, instead of good like most geeks think about it.
One lawsuit can't prove that something is "usually" true or false. What it shows is that in at least 2 cases (one for each of the trolls) anonymity is used for evil. You need a lot more than 2 cases to say that the majority of anonymous people on the internet are using it for evil
Parent
Technicality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hateful speech is not illegal. False claims that substantially harm a person ARE illegal under slander/libel law. This law applies whether the comments are online or on the playground.
Re:Technicality? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, world-wide, we have different laws.
Hateful speech is not illegal.
See R. v. Keegstra [hrcr.org]. In Canada at least, you do not have an unlimited right to free speech, even if you are not targeting a specific person.
tl,dr: Making hateful statements against a particular identifiable group is illegal in Canada.
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Re:Technicality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Making hateful statements against a particular identifiable group is illegal in Canada.
Does it depend on the group? Can I hate lawyers, politicians, and statisticians?
What about pirates, Real Pirates (the board-a-ship-and-kill-people kind), rapists, serial killers, or nazis?
All of those are pretty identifiable groups. Which ones can I explicitly say that I hate? I want to be sure I can get through customs next time...
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Re:Technicality? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's for the court to decide.
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I don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a pretty straightforward bit of libel...Even on the internets you have to be careful if you're explicitly slandering someone by name.
Illegal is illegal, and if these monkeys were dumb enough to put up all this crap under handles that they accessed from their homes, then they're screwed, and it's hard to see how they ought not be.
Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Informative)
From the article and the court documents it appears that the plaintiffs are both "Jane Doe"s. That means that their identity was not explicitly known to everyone (else the Jane Doe ploy makes no sense) and that it is the supposed attacker's identity which is being exposed instead.
The article notes that "the Jane Doe plaintiffs contend that the postings about them became etched into the first page of search engine results on their names," which strongly suggests that the posts included their real names, not just their online handles. If so, then the Jane Doe thing is to further distance their names from the media and search engines.
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Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Informative)
I realize I am breaking some kind of Slashdot rule here, but I've googled this further.
On March 9, the Dean of Yale's law school wrote this [ms-jd.org]: "The Washington Post ran a story about several of our students who have been personally targeted on an internet message board. While this message board purports to be about law school and law school admissions, it contains numerous sexist, racist, homophobic and other derogatory comments by anonymous posters. Some of these comments include the names and personal information of our students and other individuals, along with many false and hurtful assertions."
Furthermore, their names are stated clearly in this PDF [wsj.com] of Ciolli's lawsuit against the two women.
Parent
hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Someone fill me in here. (Score:5, Informative)
Keep reading. It gets worse:
I'd say they have a reasonable case here.
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Re:Someone fill me in here. (Score:5, Insightful)
seriously?
Maybe because she doesn't want her name further associated with scurrilous rumors...
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Re:Internets... (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies are going to great lengths to search for anything particularly incriminating on people that are applying for a job, and when you're starting out in a law firm - where your basically doing bitch work anyway, and your #1 job is fitting in - anything that they could find that could make a person look bad is going to be held against them. No one has any privacy left anymore, so things that used to get passed off as "kids being kids" have long-reaching consequences later in life. I cry for that.
With all that said, no, I don't think that this case sets a good precedent. The fault here is anyone that would listen to anonymous slander and use it against the women in question for any reason.
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Re:Internets... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Internets... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Internets... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Internets... (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally can't wait until the top entry in google on their names will be "got sued by Jane Doe for defamation", together with a link to their highly professional statements. I'm sure it will greatly enhance their careers in the fast food industry.
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Re:Internets... (Score:5, Insightful)
No one has any privacy left anymore
Privacy starts at home, kids. If you don't want a future employer seeing pictures of you drunk and naked at a frat party, don't put them on the internet!
Seriously, the biggest privacy problem we have these days is people thinking that everything is private unless they explicitly make it public, but reality doesn't work that way. Nobody goes walking down the street naked, then claims their privacy was violated when people looked at them. Well, the internet is no different. If you want something on the internet kept private, you have to make it private, otherwise it's public.
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Re:Supid girls (Score:5, Informative)
If he's allowed to say those things, then her father/brother/boyfriend should be allowed to brutally murder the AC to protect her from rape (he did say he'd rape her). We (society) afford you rights and place limits on those rights, in exchange we protect you from your fellow man. Them's the rules. "God" didn't give us any rights, your rights are, in practice, what society decides your rights are. Often I disagree with society, but not in this case.
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Re:Isn't there a matter of intent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, hate speech is a somewhat subjective issue,
What body is going to decide what exactly is hate speech on the Internet?
Oddly enough, there is a body whose job is to determine the facts on matters that are somewhat subjective, and alledged to be harmful. That body is called "a jury."
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