In a case being watched by privacy experts, a Cook County judge ruled today that a Buffalo Grove
trustee is entitled to learn the name of the anonymous person who
posted disparaging comments about the trustee's 15-year-old son on a
newspaper's Web site.
The comments that Lisa Stone had called
"deeply disturbing" were posted during a rough-and-tumble election
campaign last spring by someone calling himself "Hipcheck16."
We'll hear a lot about how this judge's decision is a threat to freedom of speech on the Internet. But my sympathy is with the mother on this one. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you should be able to trash, slander or libel someone anonymously. Come out of hiding and say the same things, then face the music.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Tags: anonymous, Buffalo Grove, Cook County, Internet, judge, post, web site
Right, now what did he say?
I guess you'll have to search Google for that one (use site:dailyhearld). Since you have access to a computer...
BTW, I foresaw a result like this and posted to that effect on the CTA Tattler, and even earlier on some anonymous IP poster's Wikipedia page. I was all in favor of the police seizing the computer of the guy who posted that Chris Benoit's wife was dead as vandalism, leading to a police inquiry when she turned out in that state.
BTW, doing that Google search indicates that there is a hipcheck16.com in which our anonymous poster wants to establish a fund to defend his First Amendment rights (whois shows it registered by proxy). However, there isn't a First Amendment right to libel, although if Stone was attacked as a public figure, she would have to prove malice. But I guess it isn't surprising that a chickenbleep would wrap himself in the flag (if that really is hipcheck18 who took out the domain name).