SI>
October 1, 1999
Message Board Users Aren't As Anonymous
As Many Think
By JASON ANDERS
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
NEW YORK -- Every day, investors crowd online message boards and
chat rooms to swap thousands of often-scathing messages about
companies. Most boards allow postings to be made using aliases, adding
to the no-holds-barred nature of the chatter.
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 Inc.
(GNET), Silicon Investor's parent.
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.
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.
"This is an incredibly tough issue for us. ... Whenever we inform someone
that there's a subpoena for their information, people ultimately think that
somebody is going to use this information to harass them or intimidate
them. Sometimes, I think that's a very legitimate fear to have," Caldwell
says.
He says he has been personally troubled by some of the subpoenas he has
received from companies -- whom he believes may have questionable
motives.
"I know at times this has a chilling effect on speech, and I really think that's
tragic. ... But we're in a very difficult position," he says. "People sometimes
say, 'My anonymity is everything, that's why I'm here. Why won't Silicon
Investor defend me?' But ultimately, people have to be responsible for
what they say."
Yahoo! Finance (quote.yahoo.com), a free stock-chat destination, doesn't
try to notify its users about subpoenas, in part because it has no idea who
most of its users are.
"We don't collect or verify personal information, so there's no way we
could warn anyone," says Mike Riley, senior producer of Yahoo Finance.
Often, he says, Yahoo turns over an IP address, a sort of digital footprint
left by computers when they visit Web sites. Companies can then use that
IP address to track the user back to a particular Internet service provider,
which can then be subpoenaed to uncover the user's identity.
Internet giant America Online (www.aol.com), on the other hand, is widely
regarded as among the most user-friendly when it comes to handling
subpoenas. The service has a longstanding policy of giving its users two
week's notice before it responds to a subpoena for their personal
information, so that users have a chance to challenge the subpoena. (AOL
also has a legal team of about 55 lawyers, compared with the two
attorneys who handle most of Silicon Investor's subpoenas.)
"We just feel like this is the right thing to do. Our users deserve a chance to
challenge the subpoenas," says Kim McCreery, a spokeswoman for the
Dulles, Va., online giant.
Of course, fighting a subpoena means hiring an attorney -- an expensive
and often futile move, says Blake Bell, an attorney with Simpson Thacher
& Bartlett in New York.
"In most cases, plaintiffs are going to be able to get the information they
want. A judge is going to be reluctant to try the case before it's even clear
who the anonymous parties are," says Bell, who runs a Web site,
CyberSecuritiesLaw (www.cybersecuritieslaw.com) that tracks so-called
cyber libel cases. "Also you have to remember that in many cases you may
be dealing with someone who isn't that familiar with lawsuits." Bell has
represented companies that have sought to unmask online investors.
"The average message-board user just isn't prepared for this," agrees
Lidsky, the University of Florida law professor. "If someone says, 'I'm
going to sue you for a million dollars,' that's enough to make most people's
hearts stop, and likely enough to silence them." She says that no matter
what the initial motivation may have been for a company that brings this
type of suit, the cases rarely end up as anything other than an effort to
silence a critic. "These people they're suing don't have any money to pay
for damages. There's nothing else to sue them for except silence."
-Jason Anders; 201-938-5099
|
