Disconcerting WSJ comments about SI:
In this ridiculously litigious world, you would think that they could do a touch better for us. Makes one want to become a full-time lurker.
--Duker
... But with increasing regularity, and relative ease, companies are uncovering the identities of their online critics. Most of the time, the users have no idea their personal information has been revealed.
"Usually your name is turned over before you even knew somebody had asked for it, and it's too late to fight it," says Lyrissa Lidsky, an associate professor at the University of Florida College of Law, who has studied lawsuits filed by companies against their online critics.
Web sites generally won't turn over users' personal information -- like names and addresses -- unless faced with a subpoena. But such subpoenas are easy to come by, lawyers say, and often impossible to fight.
Silicon Investor (www.techstocks.com), one of the most popular stock-chat sites, says it tries to notify users who are the subjects of subpoenas, but says it has no commitment to doing so. "It's just not practical for us. We would need an entire subpoena staff to handle something like that," says Ethan Caldwell, general counsel for Go2Net, Silicon Investor's parent.
Mr. Caldwell says the site receives about one subpoena a day, and in "about half" of those cases is able to give users warnings that the site is about to turn over their personal information. Since Silicon Investor is a subscription-based site, that information includes credit-card numbers and billing addresses.
Mr. Caldwell admits that the warning is often only a few days before the information is to be revealed, and may not give people enough time to fight the request.
While it's obviously impossible for a user to fight a subpoena he doesn't know exists, it's still difficult to block such a request even if given advanced warning. Subpoenas are generally sought at the beginning of a civil case that has been filed against "John Doe" defendants. Lawyers say courts generally issue subpoenas without question, and are reluctant to block such requests so early in a case. |
