California Court: Only Reveal Anonymous Commenters If They're The People This Guy Thinks They Are

from the too-clever? dept

Fri, Sep 18th 2009 12:15am — Mike Masnick

We've been discussing a lot of different cases involving anonymity of online commenters lately, and Sam Bayard has the details on a case in California where the judge appears to have come up with a (too?) clever solution to the question of protecting anonymity. Rather than directly reveal the commenters, the judge says that the guy who wants to know their identity can hire an independent third party (at the guy's own expense) who will get the IP addresses and investigate the identities. But, he also has to provide that third party with a list of names who he thinks are responsible. If the names associated with the IP addresses match up with the names on the list, they'll be revealed. If not, the commenters remain anonymous.

Now, the details of this particular case are quite a bit different than the typical cases involving anonymous commenters. Specifically, most such cases involve people pissed off at the commenters and wishing to sue them. In this case, the guy (Calvin Chang) is involved in an employment discrimination/breach of contract dispute with UC Davis, and believes some of the commenters on a certain blog post (about his case) work for the university and posted details that prove a breach of an earlier settlement. So, he's not looking to sue them, but wants to use their identities as evidence in his ongoing case.

Thus, you can sort of understand where the judge is coming from. The identities themselves don't matter at all if they're not employed by the university. But if they are among those employed by the university and prove that the university breached an agreement, then suddenly their identities could be more important. Still, I tend to think that unless the person suing can present full evidence of a violation, the right to anonymity should prevail.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: anonymity

8 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Blatant Coward (profile), 18 Sep 2009 @ 1:41am

What's in a Name?
So all they need to do is compile a text format of all the phone books in the United States, filter out duplicates and present it as the limiting list. There's a flying Squirrel here who has a comment on this method of 'protection.' H doesn't seem very hopeful....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
x, 18 Sep 2009 @ 2:06am

"Chang will provide the third party with the names of the specific university personnel believed to have posted the comments;"

He can only do that if he can show everybody in the United States are relevant to the case, I don't think he'll do very well if he tries that :)

Kind of makes you glad that you use a proxy server whenever you post :)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2009 @ 2:08am

A third party will have no authority to demand information on the IP address to the ISP ... this makes no sense?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2009 @ 6:30am

Re:
They probably do if the court orders the ISP to turn over the information to the third party. Not a lawyer, but I would guess that's how it would work.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Robert Ring (profile), 18 Sep 2009 @ 6:42am

Re:
I don't know TONS about this, but even without authority, I'm guessing some old-fashioned investigative work could turn up some names.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
chris (profile), 18 Sep 2009 @ 7:26am

Re: Re:
I don't know TONS about this, but even without authority, I'm guessing some old-fashioned investigative work could turn up some names.

why would you hire an investigator when you can just trample people's civil liberties instead?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Whisk33, 18 Sep 2009 @ 11:36am

Real life Hasbro Game!
Does your person have blonde hair?
No.
Not bernard, not susan, could be Chris but it could also be Kelly and Walter...

Do I ask if they have a big nose or glasses... oh man I'm so close!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ben, 20 Sep 2009 @ 12:38pm

If the Third Party were a private investigation group with the authority provided by law to gain a warrant than perhaps this might work. Some issues do arise however.

First: Getting the proper laws and organizations in place.
This could take quite some time. Is the lawsuit willing to wait?

Second: Who is in charge of ensuring they do not get out of hand?
A group like this could be used instead of lawsuits to gain immediate access to ISP's and Identities, providing a loophole to needing proper working of law in regards to the internet.

Third: How far does their authority extend?
If the ISp is out of state can they have jurisdiction? If so that is worrisome all the more.

Forth: How many Identities are they allowed to provide and once they try are they allowed to try again?
If they are allowed unlimited or even large amounts of Identities, this part of the idea is pointless as mentioned earlier. Multiple attempts allowed is essentially the same thing.

Fifth: Once information has been gathered what is done with it?
A firm is hired, they gather an ISP, the Identities match, then what? All that is handed back over?
I think they should be required to give up no more than the Identity and that only in front of a judge.
A firm is hired, they gather an ISP, the Identities DO NOT match, then what? NOTHING SHOULD BE GIVEN BACK EXCEPT NO RESULTS AND ALL INFORMATION PERTAINING TO ISP'S AND IDENTITIES GAINED DESTROYED. THE LIST PROVIDED FROM THE HIRING SOURCE THEN HANDED OVER TO THE OVERSIGHT PEOPLE TO ENSURE LIBEL IS NOT BEING DONE.
[ link to this | view in thread ]