Anonymity

Eclipse Aviation, a manufacturer of "affordable" jets, recently sent a subpoena to Google seeking to uncover the identities of 28 users who posted on Eclipse Aviation Critic NG, a blog that Google hosts on its Blogger service.

The subpoena, which includes a colorful list of pseudonyms such as "Turn-and-Burn," "Bill E. Goat," and "Niner Zulu," does not state why the information is necessary. AINonline, an aviation news site, gives us a bit more insight:   read more »

Last week, Republican Tim Couch of Kentucky introduced a bill in the state legislature that would impose criminal fines on Kentucky-based website operators who fail to collect "a legal name, address, and electronic mail address" before allowing a user to post a comment. The proposed law would also require website operators to "establish reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name, address, and valid electronic email address of [a user] who posts false or defamatory information about the person."

Hmm . . . This looks like a transparent attempt to get around the First Amendment protection for anonymous online speech recognized in a slew of recent and not-so-recent cases, including Doe v. Cahill, Mobilisa v. Doe, Krinsky v. Doe 6, Essent v. Doe, and Greenbaum v. Google. Entirely appropriately, Marc Randazza takes Couch out to the woodshed for failing to appreciate not only the state of the law but also the importance of anonymous speech to our nation's history.

Putting aside the First Amendment issue, Couch's bill suffers from a host of practical difficulties. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica, also fired up by the stupidity of the proposal, writes:   read more »

Breaking news from Above the Law: Anthony Ciolli, former defendant in the controversial AutoAdmit case, has filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania state court against the two plaintiffs in that case, their lawyers, ReputationDefender and one of its employees, and the shadowy "T14 Talent." He alleges wrongful initiation of civil proceedings, abuse of process, libel, slander, false light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with contract, and unauthorized use of name or likeness. It looks like Ciolli has outed one of the pseudonymous defendants in the AutoAdmit case -- "pauliewalnuts."

Here's the complaint -- we're still digesting it.

Update:  I didn't mean to be snarky about this lawsuit. Assuming that his allegations are true, I have a lot of sympathy for Ciolli, and he appears to have some actionable claims. Marc Randazza, his attorney in the AutoAdmit case, has a thoughtful post on the new lawsuit.

The AutoAdmit case (formerly Doe v. Ciolli) never fails to satisfy. If the whole situation were not absurd enough already, one of the pseudonymous posters going by the handle "AK47" has filed a motion to quash a subpoena issued by the plaintiffs to AT&T seeking information about his identity. The plaintiffs apparently were able to tie a comment attributed to AK47 in the Amended Complaint to an IP address owned by AT&T. (I'm not going to reproduce the statement here, but if you're interested, his pointless and despicable comment is found in paragraph 49 of the Amended Complaint.)

Back in January, the federal district court in Connecticut authorized the plaintiffs to issue subpoenas to a number of ISPs, universities, and websites demanding information about
the identities of the the pseudonymous posters named in the lawsuit. According to AK47's brief in support of his motion to quash, he received notice of the subpoena from AT&T on or around February 18, and it stated that he had ten days to take legal action to prevent AT&T from divulging his information. Instead of filing a motion to quash in California federal court, AK47 took action in federal court in Connecticut, where the main action in the lawsuit is taking place.  read more »