Posted on 02/23/2009 4:23:35 AM PST by Virginia Ridgerunner
The company that owns and operates the York Daily Record/Sunday News readers' comment posting Web site will release the identities of people who anonymously posted comments to a story about the stabbing death of Andrew Wright, according to sworn statements Friday in county court.
Prosecutor Timothy Barker informed Judge Thomas H. Kelley on Friday that an attorney for Topix LLC said the Internet Protocol addresses and personal information of the posters "has been preserved" and will be turned over when the company is served with a subpoena by the York County District Attorney's Office.
(snip)
Under oath Friday, York County Detective Jeffrey A. Martz told Kelley that Topix's attorney "advised me a subpoena would be sufficient" to obtain the anonymous posters' personal information.
Kelley had scheduled the hearing to allow argument against the release of the posters' identities from any other concerned parties. No one representing Topix, the newspaper or the defendants appeared in court.
Topix is a national news gathering and public forum company based in Palo Alto, Calif. Daily Record/Sunday News readers who post comments on local stories do so under the terms of Topix.
Daily Record/Sunday News managing editor Randy Parker said Friday that all comments posted to the newspaper's stories are on the Topix Web site and "Topix is ultimately responsible for the comments on their site."
According to Topix's Terms of Service, which are available on the Web page where comments are posted, "Please be aware . . . we will release specific personal information about you if required to do so in order to comply with any valid legal process such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order."
(Excerpt) Read more at eveningsun.com ...
In particularly, there was a person with the handle of “Gossipgirl”, IP address supposedly from Williamsport (but as anyone with an ounce of IP knowledge would tell you, that means nothing—only the location of the IP server) who posted a lot of information about possible suspects.
After arrests were made Gossipgirl began to accuse the DA and Police of having arrested the wrong persons.
Sounds like something happened to cause this? And ideas?
Nothing like dumping on your own customers as a business model.
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/york-daily-record/TR26UG6K7H8JA49LJ
There is no guarantee of anonymity for anything you do on the Internet. Same with email.
The constitution guarantees your right to free speech, not the right to be able to post things then be totally immune from the fallout from those postings.
If you were standing on the street corner yelling obscenities to everyone who passes you can certainly do that, however you must be willing to bear the response to your speech. The people who posted (and I have not read the article) probably thought they could do so and not ever hear any more about it. They were wrong plus they didn’t read the terms of service.
Everything you do on the Internet is logged somewhere.
Barker explained that Chief Deputy Prosecutor Chuck Patterson, who was not available for Friday's hearing, believes - from 26 comments by posters to a story on the initial arrests in connection with Wright's Dec. 28 killing inside Jamie's Courtside Sports & Spirits, a Spring Garden Township bar - that some or all might be eyewitnesses.
Kelley had scheduled the hearing to allow argument against the release of the posters' identities from any other concerned parties. No one representing Topix, the newspaper or the defendants appeared in court.
According to Topix's Terms of Service, which are available on the Web page where comments are posted, "Please be aware . . . we will release specific personal information about you if required to do so in order to comply with any valid legal process such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order."
While Kelley was not required to make a ruling on the matter, he told Barker, "I think it is appropriate for you to proceed through subpoena duces tecum (a subpoena ordering the production of records)."
Once we got the ‘Rest of the Story’, it seems quite reasonable to me.
What exactly do they think is “probable cause”? Did the postings actually contain potential evidence?
Are the comments that are posted in reference to the knowlege of a crime that was committed and being tried in court? If that’s the case then this act of commenting opens the poster to be investigated. Right?
The point being though, and this particular criminal case aside, just be careful with Topix, which would apparently out its forum posters for lesser reason if push came to shove with the government.
No, you snipped out important information so you could cause paranoia.
I will no longer post on Topix, that much is certain.
Thx for posting.
Geez. THat is a different matter altogether now.
Exactly! Snipping out the most important parts of the article is reprehensible. i would dare say that if a FReeper committed or witnessed a murder and talked about it on FR, that FR would get a subpoena, too.
If someone sends an anonymous snail mail letter to a newspaper with statements indicating the writer has evidence with regard to the crime, the police will (rightly) subpoena that letter to see if there are fingerprints or other physical evidence that might help them solve the case.
I think the analogy is pretty good here.
Some seem to think a communication via the interwebs gives additional constitutional rights as compared to older technologies. This is untrue.
Another example: We all accept fingerprinting, and the filing of the prints for all time, without batting an eye. It’s difficult to see, therefore, why DNA testing is proclaimed by some to be a violation of rights. DNA is just another way of using unique physical characteristics to establish identity. (As genetic knowledge advances, obviously DNA could be misused to determine other irrelevant facts about a person, but that’s a separate issue from its use for identification.)
“if a FReeper committed or witnessed a murder and talked about it on FR, that FR would get a subpoena, too”
No doubt about that!
I went back to the source link and see that there are two ‘comments’, the first one being about how if Topix folded to quickly, then they were outta there. Sheesh. What’s the matter with people? If they had been murdered and their killer was commenting online or witnesses that could put the perp behind bars were commenting online, would you think they would want the perp caught? The stupidity of some people just boggles the mind.
Barker explained that Chief Deputy Prosecutor Chuck Patterson, who was not available for Friday's hearing, believes - from 26 comments by posters to a story on the initial arrests in connection with Wright's Dec. 28 killing inside Jamie's Courtside Sports & Spirits, a Spring Garden Township bar - that some or all might be eyewitnesses.
Oh whose behalf are you trolling for?
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