Man Drop Suit Against Yahoo for Revealing Name
Craig Anderson
San Francisco Daily Journal Wed August 9, 2000
"SAN JOSE- A highly-publicized lawsuit against Yahoo Inc. for disclosing the identity of someone who had posted a message will be dropped, according to an attorney for the Santa Clara-based Internet portal.
'The Lawsuit will be dismissed with prejudice,' said Thomas Laffey, an attorney at Folger Levin & Kahn in Los Angeles, who represents Yahoo. The dismissal will be filed within the next two weeks.
Megan Grey, an attorney at Baker & Hostetler in Los Angeles who represents the pseudonymous plaintiff known as Aquacool, declined to comment Tuesday.
Attorneys said the lawsuit probably be dropped in conjunction with a resolution of a complaint filed in Florida by Answerthink, Inc. against Aquacool, an Ohio man. Yahoo agreed not to seek to recover its attorney fees, Laffey said.
The complaint was the first of its kind in naming Yahoo as a defendant for following its longtime policy of giving out personal information about users who post missives on its financial messages boards. The settlement of Doe aka Aquacool 2000 v. Yahoo Inc., 00-20677, which was filed May 11 in Los Angeles federal court and subsequently transferred to San Jose, averts a potential legal showdown on the issue.
Corporations across the nation have filed lawsuits about the frequently caustic messages posted on Yahoo boards which provide an online forum to discuss the merits of stock investments. The complaints name Yahoo, but the portal, which is immune to such complaints under federal law, is not the real target.
Instead, the complaining companies often are seeking account information from Yahoo to identify the people writing online messages, which can be profane or possibly libelous. In other instances, companies are worried about disclosure of confidential information and want to discover the source.
Yahoo recently changed its policy about giving out information to companies that file complaints. It now gives message boards authors 15 days in to file motions to quash subpoenas before it turns over the account information, according to a company spokeswoman.
Because of the policy change, which the company assert was made in response to user requests, and not because of the complaint, Laffey said Yahoo will face similar lawsuits in the future.
‘It is not an issue that comes up with us anymore,’ Laffey said.
Still, other attorneys who have represented clients whose identities were disclosed by Yahoo in response to subpoenas said the company still occasionally discloses information by mistake. Yahoo officials say they take the privacy issue seriously but that some individuals do not include accurate information in their account, making it impossible to find them.
Ann Beeson, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, described Yahoo’s new policy as ‘a reasonable resolution,’ though she said she wishes the company would fight harder to protect its customers’ privacy." |
