JUDGE HOLDS LAW PROTECTS COMMENTERS ON NEWSPAPER WEBSITE

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "RJ Riley (PIAUSA.org)" <rjr () piausa org>
Date: October 2, 2008 6:23:16 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: JUDGE HOLDS LAW PROTECTS COMMENTERS ON NEWSPAPER WEBSITE

Dave, I think this is an important decision protecting speech.  There  
is a war brewing between the public and sleazy business interests who  
should know that delivering good service at a fair price is the best  
way to avoid irate customers telling all.  These interests are  
desperately trying to gain control of speech on Internet.  I am  
betting that the public will win this hands down and precedent to date  
makes that a very good bet.

It is also important to note that IP addresses rarely allow  
identification of a specific person for a multitude of reasons.  They  
are useful for identifying that posts originate at a specific business  
and I have used them to identify corporate shills and stooges who were  
trying to disrupt legitimate public discussion but identifying who in  
the company made the comments is much more difficult if not impossible  
since many people may use the same computer at different times.

Ronald J Riley
JUDGE HOLDS LAW PROTECTS COMMENTERS ON NEWSPAPER WEBSITE
On September 3rd, a Montana state court judge issued an order quashing  
the subpoena that sought information to identify anonymous people who  
post on The Billings Gazette website. The case arose from an election  
dispute where losing candidate Russ Doty sued winning candidate Brad  
Molnar for libel and slander. Doty requested the subpoenas to learn  
the identity of the anonymous posters so he could use them as  
witnesses to show the damage to his reputation. Doty also believed  
some of the posts came from Molnar himself, and wanted to use the IP  
address information to identify him. The judge held that the state’s  
Media Confidentiality Act, also known as a shield law, protected the  
anonymous posters. Under the act, any information obtained or prepared  
by a news agency is protected. The judge held that this included posts  
on the newspaper message board along with printed stories. The judge  
also doubted that anonymous postings would have much credibility in  
proving the libel and slander claims.

The story from The Billings Gazette may be found at
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/09/03/news/local/22-doty.txt






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