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Yale Students' Lawsuit Unmasks Anonymous Trolls

  • Subject: Yale Students' Lawsuit Unmasks Anonymous Trolls
  • From: "nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:24:58 -0700 (PDT)
  • Bytes: 3377
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  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: http://groups.google.com
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  • Xref: ellandroad.demon.co.uk comp.os.linux.advocacy:670488
<Quote>
"Women named Jill and Hillary should be raped."

Those are the words of "AK-47" [whose posts were] so vile they spurred
a national debate on the limits of online anonymity, and an
unprecedented federal lawsuit aimed at unmasking and punishing the
posters.

Now lawyers for two female Yale Law School students have ascertained
AK-47's real identity, along with the identities of other AutoAdmit
posters, who all now face the likely publication of their names in
court records...

The unmasking of the posters marks a milestone in a rare legal
challenge to the norms of online commenting, where arguments live on
for years in search-engine results and where reputations can be
sullied nearly irreparably by anyone with a grudge, a laptop and a
WiFi connection...

Both women tried in vain to persuade the administrators of the
AutoAdmit.com site to remove the threads, according to the lawsuit.
But then the story of the cyber-harassment hit the front page of The
Washington Post, and the law school trolls became fodder for cable
news shows. Soon after, the female law students, with help from
Stanford and Yale law professors, filed the federal lawsuit in June
2007 seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

The Jane Doe plaintiffs contend that the postings about them became
etched into the first page of search engine results on their names,
costing them prestigious jobs, infecting their relationships with
friends and family, and even forcing one to stop going to the gym for
fear of stalkers....

A federal judge ruled in January that the attorneys could serve
subpoenas on ISPs and webmail providers. Using that power, the lawyers
have unmasked some -- though not all -- of the AutoAdmit posters.

Now they're asking the judge to give them additional time to try and
determine the identities of the remaining defendants, who are
currently being sued under their AutoAdmit handles: among others,
PaulieWalnuts, Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey, The Ayatollah of Rock-n-
Rollah, Patrick Bateman and HitlerHitlerHitler.

[How about Moshe Goldfarb, Ezekiel, Dr. Shlongwell, Professor Dungby
or Ms. Polly Ester?]
</Quote>

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2008/07/autoadmit

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