Slammers, prepare to get dunked.
After a Manhattan judge ordered Google to identify the anonymous blogger who called a model a “skank” and a “ho,” other victims of ‘Net slurs now hope to see their tormenters exposed.
“The attention that has been given to this case will allow other people who are the victims of anonymous online attacks to fight back,” said Evan Brown, a Chicago intellectual-property lawyer.
Steven Wagner, the lawyer for model Liskula Cohen, said his office has been overwhelmed by angry calls since Manhattan State Court Justice Joan Madden ruled that Google had to disclose the registration information for the blogger, Rosemary Port, because she was writing defamatory material about his client.
One man who called Wagner claimed he had lost his job because he had been labeled a sex offender. Another said he had been forced out of a business deal because a Web commenter accused him of unsavory business practices.
George Spodak, the former mayor of Manalapan, NJ, was elated at the judge’s decision.
“She’s telling it like it is,” he said.
Spodak, 69, has been labeled a pedophile, an alcoholic, a wife beater and a criminal by a group of unknown online enemies.
“I have proof that you’re a pedophile, I have proof that you stole the recreation funds. I have proof that you beat both of your wives,” an anonymous commenter wrote of him on a message board on NJ.com.
Spodak isn’t taking it lying down. “They’re not going to do this to me in the town that I love,” he said. “You can’t call someone a pedophile and then run and hide behind the First Amendment.”
He sued a year ago and has subpoenaed NJ.com for the attackers’ identities. NJ.com gave up the e-mail addresses but did not know their names. So Spodak is going after Google, AOL and Yahoo! for the IP address that corresponds to the e-mails.
If the Internet service providers don’t voluntarily hand over the anonymous posters’ IP addresses, Spodak’s lawyer, Lawrence Kleiner, will request a court order, urging a judge to demand the names be made public.
A lawyer for Google said the company would provide information about a user only in response to a subpoena or court order.
“People seem to think there is a different morality on the Internet than in the real world,” said San Francisco intellectual-property attorney Karl Kronenberger. “It’s becoming less that way with decisions like these.”