Unmasking Trolls to End Online Harassment - Lawsuit to Name Real Identity of Posters
You never forget the feeling.
It's creepy. It's violent. It violates you even though it's 'just words.' It makes you feel powerless because there's virtually nothing you can do to stop it. Even worse, if the forum isn't moderated, the words and posts will remain there forever to haunt you...and smear you in the eyes of potential employers, clients, even boyfriends who google your name.
Women who've been in this situation haven't had much recourse. But now a lawsuit initiated by two female Yale Law School students is threatening to chip away at the anonymity of these online 'trolls,' adding to the ongoing debate over what constitutes free speech online.
The incidents in question took place in forums at AutoAdmit.com, which calls itself "the most prestigious college discussion board in the world." A July 30, 2008 article at Wired.com entitled "Yale Students' Lawsuit Unmasks Anonymous Trolls, Opens Pandora's Box," details the start of the anonymous attacks:
According to Ann Bartow, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, "We have never had such a way to lie and distort facts about people -- to spread lies and distortions in a way that is attached to them. And you can game it to come up on the front page of Google."The AutoAdmit controversy began even before one of the women, identified in court documents as "Jane Doe I," started classes in the fall of 2005, the lawsuit alleges. Doe I was alerted in the summer to an AutoAdmit comment thread entitled "Stupid Bitch to Attend Law School." The thread included messages such as, "I think I will sodomize her. Repeatedly" and a reply claiming "she has herpes." The second woman, Jane Doe II, was similarly attacked beginning in January 2007.
Both women tried in vain to persuade the administrators of the AutoAdmit.com site to remove the threads, according to the lawsuit....The Jane Doe plaintiffs contend that the postings about them became etched into the first page of search engine results on their names, costing them prestigious jobs, infecting their relationships with friends and family, and even forcing one to stop going to the gym for fear of stalkers.
What makes this particular case so compelling is that attorneys for the the two women have figured out the real identities of several online trolls and are pursuing information to ascertain others. As the Wired article reports, "[they] all now face the likely publication of their names in court records -- potentially marking a death sentence for the comment trolls' budding legal careers even before the case has gone to trial."
Comments
If someone hasn’t the courage to put his (or her) real name at the bottom of a disparaging comment about someone else, that speaks volumes about how little veracity there probably is in whatever was said.
I’m all for holding people accountable for their remarks – provided that this doesn’t further chill true whistle-blowers and honest community activists. Dogforbid this ends up strengthening the hand of those that use SLAPP suits to *hide* from the truth.
Nurmi, what many posters probably don’t realize is that within some sites (About.com among them) we can see the incoming email address. So total anonymity doesn’t really exist. In the case of AutoAdmit.com, those in charge had it in their power to delete comments that went beyond the pale, but refused to do so on ‘free speech’ grounds.
I approach this with the ‘reasonable person’ mindset: if a reasonable person were offended by the content, it has no place online. Otherwise, everyone has the right to express an opinion – as long as it isn’t deliberately stated to hurt and humiliate others.
Excuse me? A “reasonable person” standard for what can and can’t be published on the internet?
This is America. I might not like what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it. And most ALL speech, with the exception of obscenity and incitations to imminent violence, are protected at least in part by the First Amendment. This ridiculous “reasonable person” approach throws away the constitutional freedoms that this country is built on; freedoms that, like it or not, extend to the internet.
I’m not defending these scumbags, but we already have rules for handling the regulation of speech. And guess what, offense to a reasonable person is not enough. There are a lot of “offensive” notions that belong in the marketplace of ideas. If speech crosses a line outside of its constitutional protection, let the government regulate it. If speech constitutes a tort or a crime, let the courts handle it. But even the courts and the government have to work within constitutional bounds, because the constitution demands it.
You are perfectly correct Avatar…but with a slight misconception, the man who wrote the constitution said that every hundred years or so the thing needed to be rewritten. Not to constrain rights but to account for changes in lifestyles. Like the internet, it’s easer to say things over the internet because you don’t have that face to face humility.
Back in the day you wouldn’t go up to someone and call them names unless you really wanted to start something. Like even now I have the courage to type this in reply, where in real life I would just let you talk because you sound very harsh and if I’d said this I get the feeling you would have turned on me and yelled at me or something.
The constitution is meant to be amended, is why we have that power. Therefore we should also have the power to rewrite it. Because free speech isn’t held to the standards it once was. Everyone thinks free speech is you can say anything to anyone, but that’s not quite right…free speech is there so we can tell our government that we don’t like them and not get killed. It’s not there so we can call our neighbor a B***h or a whore (even if they are) because that takes rights away from them and that is unconstitutional.
Being a free country is a very hard thing to do.
I’m glad to see that someone has been able to untangle this. I experienced something similar except the people or person used regular spam and added extra information to it. It really been horrible. I had no recourse and in the process of trying to figure out who it was I was charged with harrassment. I had to defend that while the person who it really was proceded to show up at my college in another state. It destroyed my reputation, education, finances, driving record as one is always looking over their shoulder and you never have a moment of feeling of personal safety.