Get ready to clog up the courts

[Grumpy]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regiona...Zv1kp7b0KkDWFP


MODEL CAN UNMASK BLOG BOOR

By LAURA ITALIANO
Last Updated: 10:38 AM, August 19, 2009
Posted: 10:38 AM, August 19, 2009
No skanks, bloggers.

A Manhattan judge ruled yesterday that a blogger can't hide behind a web of anonymity while flinging the ugly words "skank" and "ho" at somebody online.

The sternly worded ruling orders Google to give up the identity of an anonymous blogger-assailant who inexplicably devoted an entire blog -- titled "Skanks in NYC" -- to maligning beautiful blond model Liskula Cohen.
Once she learns her attacker's name -- possibly as early as today -- the model can serve the anonymous blogger with a defamation lawsuit.



The blog, which was posted through Google's "Blogger.com" subsidiary last year, had included sexy fashion shots of Cohen with captions using the words "skank," "ho" and "whoring."



In fighting to stay anonymous, the blogger had argued these remarks were "non-actionable opinion and/or hyperbole" -- in other words, "trash talk."
"I really hope it's not somebody I know," Cohen, 27, of Manhattan, said yesterday.



"I'm a human being. I bleed. I have feelings. When I saw that blog, it was awful," she told The Post. "All I can say for this person is, I really truly hope that they have more in their life than this," she said of the vile blog, which has been taken down.



"The thrust of the blog is that [Cohen] is a sexually promiscuous woman," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden wrote in her decision. That included references to Cohen as "whoring" and "ready to engage in oral sexual activity."



As such, the international cover girl is entitled to insist in a defamation lawsuit that the blogger's statements are false and damaging -- and to get from Google the blogger's name she needs in order to do so, the judge ruled.
Cohen's lawyer, Steven Wagner, said he hopes the decision sends a message to bloggers, Twitterers, and whoever else would use the anonymity of the Internet for cowardly defamations.



"The rules for defamation on the Web -- for actual reality as well as virtual reality -- are the same," Wagner said. "The Internet is not a free-for-all."
But the lawyer for the anonymous blogger warned that the real free-for-all will happen in the court system if everyone who's ever suffered an ugly insult online decides to take their complaint before a judge.



"The floodgates would be opened if you tried to regulate these very broad, common insults and invective on the Internet," said Anne Salisbury.



"You can be really, really mean to people -- you just can't lie about a set of facts that are provable as lies, and that you knew or recklessly disregarded the truth of."




What a waste of our resources this will lead too..

[JJIII]

We need "Loser Pays" tort reform.

[merrylander]

They already know the poster's name, but I agree - if you bring a lawsuit and lose you pay everyone's expenses.

[Sandy G]

Children shouldn't be allowed to play w/Big People's things...

[Grumpy]

I think this is just plain stupid. Like the courts don't have anything better to play with name calling cases !

[spasmo55]

I guess I better watch what I say here, LOL

[Sandy G]

All y'all are Nasswholes...An' yer Feets Stink, too ! So there...Neener, neener, neener....Come do sumpin' about it....(grin)

[noonereal]

Seems like a potentially bad decision. Did she post it as a fact or as an opinion?

If she posted it as an opinion than I think everyone that ever used a keyboard should be concerned. Sounds un-American to notbe able to post an opinion as well.