Fruit Of The Loom Seeking To Unmask Online Critics
By NICOLE RIDGWAY
NEW YORK -- The cloak of anonymity the Internet offers message-board and chat-room participants is starting to unravel as more companies unearth legal ways to unmask their online critics.
This time, officials at Fruit of the Loom Ltd. (FTL) want to get to the bottom of who is spreading what they deem "disparaging" information about the company in an online forum hosted by Yahoo Finance.
The apparel maker has filed a pre-litigation discovery order with the Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois that requests that Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) identify the legal names of two message-board participants who use the monikers "expertone 2000" and "Prognosticator Man."
The company suspects the unknown posters are employees discussing "internal company matters" in the online forums, general counsel John Ray told Dow Jones Newswires. If they are employees, he said those actions would be in violation of the company's confidentiality policies.
Fruit of the Loom expects to discover the legal names of Prognosticator and expertone in the next two weeks, Ray said. He said the company was recently successful in outing a newly hired employee who discussed internal matters on the Web.
Ray added that Fruit of the Loom doesn't have any issue with Yahoo or chat rooms, but finds the issuance of subpoenas or, in this case, petitions of discovery, the only way to expose online detractors.
In an online interview, a person claiming to be expertone said he hasn't been contacted by Fruit of the Loom or Yahoo. expertone said he'd take legal action if Yahoo discloses any information about him without prior contact or obtaining his permission.
Yet, Yahoo's privacy policy has loopholes that exempt the portal from any liability if it discloses a user's identity.
In the policy, Yahoo states it has the right to disclose account information in cases where it believes disclosure is necessary in identifying, contacting or bringing legal action against someone who is violating its terms of service or is causing injury to anyone else.
A Yahoo spokesman declined comment on this particular case. However, Yahoo has previously stated that the only way it will divulge a person's identity is through a subpoena - as is typical with other Web sites that host chat rooms and message boards.
While Fruit of the Loom didn't disclose which messages are in question, legal documents report they occurred on Oct. 3 and Oct. 5.
During the period, there was only one posting by Prognosticator. It criticized Fruit of the Loom's acting chief financial officer, G. William Newton, and his business practices.
In a phone interview, someone who claimed to be Prognosticator - but declined to reveal his legal name - admitted that his comments "were pretty vulgar." He believes that any legal action taken by Fruit of the Loom to discover his identity is a violation of his rights.
"It's just me having an opinion on somebody's personality," he said.
Prognosticator said he used to work with Newton and Fruit of the Loom, but no longer does and hasn't for over a year. He added that he rarely participates in the Fruit of the Loom message board.
But perhaps the most controversial messages to Fruit of the Loom were those written by expertone.
Expertone wrote five messages during the two days, most of which focused on the efforts of Fruit of the Loom Chairman William Farley to lobby for an amendment to a trade bill that would allow apparel made in the Caribbean to enter the U.S. duty-free as long as the fabric comes from the U.S.
With plants in the Caribbean, Fruit of the Loom - like many other multinational companies - would stand to benefit from the amendment.
In the Friday interview, expertone - who said he never worked for Fruit of the Loom - said he'd allow Yahoo to disclose certain information about him if Fruit of the Loom's lobbyists were to sign sworn statements under penalty of perjury that the statements he posted were false.
-Nicole Ridgway; Dow Jones Newswires, 201-938-5670
-Scott Scholten contributed to this article. |
