Off-topic, but a good read....
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Sites Unmask Online Investors
Before They Can Fight Back
By JASON ANDERS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
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,
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.
"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," Mr.
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 Mr. 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." Mr. Bell has represented companies that have sought to unmask
online investors.
"The average message-board user just isn't prepared for this," agrees Ms.
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."
Write to Jason Anders at jason.anders@wsj.com. |
