Most Viewed Threat Entries

In June 2007, a subsidiary of Essent Healthcare, Inc. filed suit in Texas state court against an anonymous blogger and an undefined number of anonymous posters to his blog. Essent's petition contains claims for defamation, trade disparagement, breach...

Carey Bock hired Sue Scheff's company, Parents Universal Resource Experts (PURE) which provides referral services for families of teenagers with behavioral problems, to help withdraw her sons from a boarding school in Costa Rica. Scheff put Bock in touch with a consultant,...

43rd State Blues: Democracy for Idaho describes itself as a "website of, by and for Democrats and those who lean towards Democratic, progressive causes." The website offers what it calls a "team blog" service -- users who register for an...

A Pocono Country Place Property Owners Association and several of its members have sued Robert Sciarrone, the operator of The Pocono SpeakEasy, a forum "[d]edicated for our First Amendment Right to speak out" on issues related to the Pocono region...

After hearing that the Taubman Company Limited Partnership was building a large shopping mall near his home, Henry Mishkoff created a website and registered a domain name for it at "shopsatwillowbend.com." (Taubman's official website for the mall was located at "theshopsatwillowbend.com" and...

Two brothers from New Jersey, Mark and Matthew D'Avella, spent the summer working for the A&P supermarket in Califon, New Jersey. They made the best of what could have been a boring situation by creating parodic rap songs with supermarket themes under...

In the fall of 2004, two students at Hudson High School ("HHS") in Hudson, Massachusetts formed a Conservative Club in an effort to provide a forum for pro-conservative views on campus. The HHS Conservative Club was affiliated with a national organization, the...

On March 13, 2007, Viacom International, which owns, among other properties, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, and Paramount Pictures, sued YouTube and its parent Google for copyright infringement seeking $1 billion in damages. Viacom asserts a number of copyright related claims, including direct...

In September 2004, management consulting firm George S. May International Company (GSMIC) filed a  lawsuit against Ripoff Report, a consumer review website.  GSMIC's complaint included claims for defamation, "false descriptions and representations" in violation of the Lanham Act, trade libel,...

Paparazzi photo agency, X17, sued celebrity gossip blogger Mario Lavandeira (aka Perez Hilton) for allegedly posting its photographic images without permission. The complaint included claims for copyright infringement and unfair competition under the "hot news" misappropriation theory recognized by the...

Using the alias "Proud Citizen," an anonymous commenter posted two statements on the "Smyrna/Clayton Issues Blog," a website sponsored by the Delaware State News. The statements criticized Patrick Cahill, a City Councilman of Smyrna, saying that Cahill was "paranoid" and had undergone...

In November 2007, Internet Solutions Corporation and its President and Director Ayman Difrawi (a.k.a. Alec Difrawi) sued Les Henderson, Daniel Bruce Scalf, Jeremy Scalf, Conrad Longmore, and a number of anonymous defendants for defamation, false light invasion of privacy, and other torts....

In this landmark internet case, internet service provider Compuserve was absolved from liability for content hosted on its servers. Don Fitzpatrick published a daily newsletter called "Rumorville" that provided news and gossip pieces about the journalism industry and individual reporters. Rumorville...

Jennifer Reisinger operates Sheboygan Spirit, a website pertaining to the government and community of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and Brat City Web Design, a site promoting her web development business.  Reisinger's business site contained a link to the ...

Dendrite International, a company that developed and serviced software for the pharmaceutical industry, brought a John Doe lawsuit in New Jersey state court against fourteen unnamed defendants for critical messages they posted on Yahoo! message boards. Dendrite claimed the messages were defamatory...

Aaron Wisniewski, an eighth grader, sent instant messages to several of his friends using his home computer. The instant messages contained a "buddy icon" that Aaron had designed, which was a picture of a pistol firing at a man's head with the...

In January 2009, Fashion model Liskula Cohen petitioned a New York state court for "pre-action" discovery from Google Inc. (on behalf of its subsidiary Blogger.com), seeking the identity of the anonymous operator of the Skanks in NYC blog.  The blog...

Krowne operates The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter (ml-implode.com, mortgageimplode.com), a Web site that posts information about mortgage lending companies that have gone out of business or are expected to go out of business. On April 18, 2007, Krowne posted an e-mail from an...

Larry Giles set up a website called "The Veranda Park News," which covered events in his residential community, aesthetic issues in the neighborhood, and commentary. Allegedly, his site included statements to the effect that the housing developer of his community, Veranda Partners,...

The Gentle Wind Project ("GWP") was a "spiritual-healing" group that produced and distributed what it characterized as "healing instruments" based on designs communicated from "the spirit world." Husband and wife, James Bergin and Judy Garvey, left the group and started a web...