Judge: Media must reveal IDs of online posters

Chicago Tribune ^ | March 6, 2011

[digger48]

INDIANAPOLIS — A judge in a defamation case has ordered news media outlets in Indianapolis to reveal information that could help identify people who posted disparaging comments about an official on their online forums.

An Indiana journalism shield law that protects reporters from having to reveal their sources doesn't protect web sites from being forced to disclose who made anonymous posts, Marion Superior Court Judge S.K. Reid ruled.

Reid held that The Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis Business Journal must provide names or other information that would help Jeffrey Miller, the former chief executive of Junior Achievement of Central Indiana, identify who wrote online comments that described him as "greedy" and warranting an investigation by the state attorney general.

Kevin Betz, an attorney for Miller, told the Star the rulings were the first of their kind in Indiana.

The case is part of a national trend of claims that target anonymous Internet posters to web sites operated by news media and other owners, the Star reported.

[Slings and Arrows]

IANAL, but this suit sounds like a fishing expedition with just a touch of shakedown.

[TxDas]

I think you can post any opinion you want as long as it is not anonymous.

[TxDas]

I like the British system where if you sue and lose you have to pay all the expenses for both sides.

So I agree, an institution with deep pockets can sue you beyond all reason regardless of who is right.

What we need to do is change the tort laws so the common man does not have to lurk in the darkness and blog anomalously to tell the truth about some evildoer.

[lentulusgracchus]

You are free to write what you want, but you’re responsible for damages. Rule of law 101.

Rule of law, or rule of SLAPP? Remember Lillian Hellmann (Communist playwright) and novelist Mary McCarthy (who criticized Hellmann on Johnnie Carson's Tonight Show).