A California appellate court has gone the extra mile to protect the identity of bloggers. In a financial message board, there was apparently a lively, and not very nice discussion about the corporate officers of a Florida company. Upset with the cyber-smear, one of the corporate officers sued to get the identity of 10 Yahoo! posters. One of the anonymous posters objected, and the Court of Appeal in California agreed.
In an interesting opinion, the Court noted that courts have recognized the right to publish anonymously as a long-standing tradition. "Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously, or not at all."
Of course, the right to be nameless is not the same as the right to defame without disclosing your identity. The California court used the same balancing test that the Texas court used in the case I posted about here.
Essentially, in order to learn who the blogger is, you must have a defamation case that would survive a Motion for Summary Judgment. I think that is a decent way to balance interests, and am glad to see other courts adopting it.
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