Anonymous is a Coward
by Michael Wong
My initial thoughts after reading the first paragraph of this story were "here's another person being bullied with a CyberSLAPP lawsuit". But once I finished, my sentiments changed.
This is an obvious case of one person maliciously vilifying another, for a petty and personal reason; the victim "may have" bad-mouthed the perpetrator in front the latter's boyfriend. Now Google is being dragged into the fight because they released the perpetrator's real identity under court order and the perpetrator is suing Google for failing to protect her anonymity.
In this case, I don't think Google was wrong. They have no responsibility to shield someone who is engaging in the defamation of another, from civic justice. People should not be able to say whatever they want behind a curtain secrecy. If you want to publicly attack someone, then you should be brave enough to do so in the open.
I know that there are bloggers living in countries with oppressive governments that rely on anonymity to speak out against oppression. When Yahoo and Google cooperated in exposing some individuals who were then arrested, tried and imprisoned, I was very critical of their actions because their motives for cooperating was economical, not legal.
But speaking out for freedom is different from calling someone a skank. One is an issue of free speech, while the other libel.
Posted under Uncategorized on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 13:24
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