Courts - Suit against Kentucky newspaper to reveal anonymous poster's identity
Jason Riley has this story today in the Louisville Courier Journal, under the headline "EKU student sues over anonymous post." Some quotes:
The anonymous post appeared online Aug. 13, 2008, under a Richmond Register story, headlined, "You can buy it at the mall, but you can't wear it there."The newspaper story, which made national news, was about a college student who'd been kicked out of a central Kentucky mall because she was told the dress she was wearing - bought there the day before - was too short.
But the online poster, identified only as l2bme, claimed to have the true story behind Kymberly Clem's eviction - that she had exposed herself to a woman and her children who remarked on the dress.
A furious Clem alleged defamation, with her attorney filing a lawsuit against l2bme and subpoenaing the newspaper to provide the anonymous poster's identity.
"This person basically fabricated something they wrote as factual," said Clem's attorney, Wesley Browne.
In an era where newspaper Web sites and blogs allow anonymous commenters increasing freedom, lawsuits and subpoenas seeking their names are becoming much more common.
Earlier this month, the U.S. attorney's office in Las Vegas demanded the identities of everyone who wrote on The Review-Journal's site about a criminal tax trial in progress.
The newspaper had planned to try to quash the subpoena on First Amendment grounds, but the U.S. attorney's office narrowed its request to two comments that it said could be construed as threatening jurors or prosecutors. The newspaper agreed to give up the names, but the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada is fighting to stop them, according to a Review-Journal article.
In Kentucky, the subpoena against The Richmond Register remains a rarity - one that is breaking new legal ground.
"This is the first of probably many times in the future when the laws that were created during an age when the Internet didn't exist are being applied to a new medium of information," said Kenyon Meyer, an attorney for The Richmond Register.
While the Register took down the comment and banned l2bme from further posts, the paper is fighting the subpoena. As part of its defense, it cites the First Amendment rights of the paper and the poster to speak freely in a public forum - the same defense used by other papers with online sites and bloggers.
