Anonymous No More - Lawsuit Outs Mathew C. Ryan of Austin, TX as Troll in Online Harassment Case

RETRACTION: The original version of this post incorrectly spelled the first name of the individual named in the lawsuit with two Ts. This has been corrected as noted below:

Remember the name Mathew C. Ryan of Austin, TX (spelled with one T). As soon as someone locates an accurate photo of that specific (and correct) individual, no doubt he'll become the poster boy of the movement to end online sexual harassment of women. (Although, as reader Marc J. Randazza points out, the name is so common that several individuals in Austin share it; an individual whose first name has two Ts who happens to be an attorney is receiving unwelcome attention. That poor gentleman is blameless, and my apologies go out to him.)

The name Mathew C. Ryan is receiving this kind of intense scrutiny because two female Yale law students, the victims of repeated vicious personal attacks and libelous comments, filed a lawsuit over abusive statements made by Ryan and other anonymous posters on the forums of AutoAdmit.com. And their attorneys are starting the process of outing the chief instigators of this deliberate destruction of the women's reputations, beginning with Mathew C. Ryan.

According to an AP story in Wednesday's Boston Globe:

Through subpoenas to Internet service providers, the women have learned the real identities of several other defendants, but are trying to resolve their claims against those people before deciding whether to name them, according to court papers....

The women say Ryan made sexually charged slurs about them on the Web, including a false claim that one of the women had a sexually transmitted disease. The lawsuit also alleges that Ryan encouraged further attacks on the other woman and used anti-Semitic language. Other posts by other defendants included remarks about one plaintiff's breasts....the women's family backgrounds and supposed sexual exploits while invoking racially and sexually charged slurs.

Some...threatened to rape one of the women, claimed she got a poor score on the law school test to harm her future job prospects and attempted to start rumors that one of the women had died or committed suicide....The anonymous posters also started a Web site devoted to "rating" female law students from around the country. Some participants in the contest sent photos of one of the women without her permission, according to the lawsuit....

The person who allegedly wrote the rape comment fought a subpoena to have his Internet provider disclose his identity....[H]e argued that the rape remark did not specifically harm or threaten either woman since millions of women share their first names.

He calls the online postings "unsavory but legally innocuous" -- and argues that his free-speech rights outweigh the women's right to seek redress.

I realize there are those who will echo the free speech argument made above. But I think we can all agree that this isn't about free speech. It's about willful, intentional, deliberate sexual harassment, perpetrated by guys who thought they could get away with it because nobody would ever know who they were. Not anymore.

Related article:
UnmaskingTrolls to End Online Harasment - Lawsuit to name Real Identity of Posters