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Mashable is reporting that Google is being forced to reveal the identity of an offensive blogger.
Here is a quote from the blog in question: “How old is this skank? 40 something? She’s a psychotic, lying, whoring, still going to clubs at her age, skank.”
This brings up so many interesting questions. Mashable points out that this could lead to a slew of trivial lawsuits and have serious implications for online privacy. But shouldn’t a person be responsible for the things they say? Why should the laws of slander and libel be different for anonymous bloggers?
What do you think?
August 19th, 2009 at 7:43 am
There are a lot of issues roiling around in here, and I’ve written about some of them on my own blog in the past as they deal with political blogging. I’ll try to be brief here.
The first is the idea of pseudonymity on the web. It doesn’t exist. You can try to hide yourself, you can try to keep your identity secret, but a good enough investigator can figure out who you are. In this particular case, the plaintiff’s counsel is just being lazy in demanding google give up the name of the blogger, because it wouldn’t take long for a good investigator to figure out who it is.
Second is the question of libel or slander. There’s a higher bar to clear for libel and slander in the US for public figures–I guess the theory is that if you make yourself a public figure, then you have to expect that some people are going to talk shit about you. This is called the “actual malice” standard. “The actual malice standard requires that the plaintiff in a defamation or libel case prove that the publisher of the statement in question knew that the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Because of the extremely high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and the difficulty in proving essentially what is inside a person’s head, such cases—when they involve public figures—rarely prevail.” That’s a high bar to clear.
Finally, I don’t think the laws governing slander and libel are different for bloggers than they are for anyone else. Seriously, has the blogger in this case said anything worse than half the crap Perez Hilton posts on any given day (much less his commenters)? I think it’s more that the laws governing libel and slander are assumed to be more restrictive than they really are, especially as it comes to public figures.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Brian seems obviously correct when he says he doesn’t think “the laws governing slander and libel are different for bloggers than they are for anyone else.” I’m confused as to how this person’s blog was “defamatory” and not just “immature,” and what the difference then is between, as Brian points out, Perez Hilton and this blogger. Can’t people just talk shit and be assholes? Of course they can.