Blogger news; A California Court Creates New Procedure for Uncovering Anonymous Commenters.
The Sacramento Bee and the Chronicle of Higher Education point us to a new online anonymity case from California. Last week, Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang ruled (scroll to Item 7) on blogger David Greenwald's motion to quash a subpoena seeking the identity of commenters to his blog, the People's Vanguard of Davis. Taking an approach I've never seen before, the court — ahem — split the baby. Judge Chang decided that former UC Davis police officer Calvin Chang (no relation to the judge) cannot obtain directly any identifying information for the commenters in question, but he can employ a third-party expert to determine whether the comments were posted by specific UC Davis personnel whose names Chang will provide in advance.
Here's the back story: This summer, Mr. Chang's attorney served the subpoena on Google, Greenwald's former blog host, as part of Chang's employment discrimination and breach of contract action against the UC Davis. Greenwald published blog entries about Chang's lawsuit back in February 2009, a few days after the suit was filed, and several readers posted negative comments about Chang and his case. The subpoena seeks identifying information for seven anonymous and pseudonymous comments. Chang maintains that the individuals who left these comments are "managing agents" of the university, and that the comments themselves constitute evidence of breach of a previous settlement agreement by the university. Google informed Greenwald of the subpoena, and he challenged it, arguing that the First Amendment protects the rights of his commenters to speak anonymously and that the information is not relevant to Chang's suit against the university
Link:
http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2009/splitting-digital-baby-california-court-creates-new-procedure-uncovering-anonymous-comment