In This Article
Subscribe to Technology Updates
Yale University in New Haven, CT
Anonymous AutoAdmit Posters to be Revealed in Court
A pair of female Yale Law School graduates suing message board posters for online harassment have won the right to reveal the posters’ identities in court.
30-Second Summary
AutoAdmit, or xoxohth, is a popular online forum for law school students and graduates. It is loosely moderated and filled with offensive material, including racist, anti-Semitic and sexist posts.
A female student at Yale Law School became the target of abuse in 2005, with users making sexually-explicit, threatening remarks. A second female student would receive similar abuse in a thread two years later.
On June 12, 2007, the two students filed a lawsuit, alleging defamation, against a site administrator and many anonymous posters. The plaintiffs were able to uncover the identity of a poster, “AK47,” through a subpoena to his Internet service provider. AK47 filed a motion to quash the subpoena, arguing that it violated his “constitutionally protected right to speak anonymously,” but the motion was denied in June and his name is set to become public.
The decision was applauded by many who see it as a blow against online harassment. “Libel, slander and defamation are actionable, and you don’t get to say whatever you want about someone without consequences just because you post it on the internet under a fake name,” writes Feministe’s Jill Filipovic.
But others have argued that it violates the posters’ rights to free speech, however offensive their speech might be. Law professor Ann Althouse asks, “Isn't ‘the scummiest kind of sexually offensive tripe’ exactly what we always used to say people had to put up with in a free country?”
The results of the case will play a large role in determining the right to free speech on the Internet. Even if the lawsuit fails, the outing of anonymous posters may cause others to think twice before posting offensive remarks. “It might remind some potential would-be defamers that their anonymity may not be secure,” says UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.
A female student at Yale Law School became the target of abuse in 2005, with users making sexually-explicit, threatening remarks. A second female student would receive similar abuse in a thread two years later.
On June 12, 2007, the two students filed a lawsuit, alleging defamation, against a site administrator and many anonymous posters. The plaintiffs were able to uncover the identity of a poster, “AK47,” through a subpoena to his Internet service provider. AK47 filed a motion to quash the subpoena, arguing that it violated his “constitutionally protected right to speak anonymously,” but the motion was denied in June and his name is set to become public.
The decision was applauded by many who see it as a blow against online harassment. “Libel, slander and defamation are actionable, and you don’t get to say whatever you want about someone without consequences just because you post it on the internet under a fake name,” writes Feministe’s Jill Filipovic.
But others have argued that it violates the posters’ rights to free speech, however offensive their speech might be. Law professor Ann Althouse asks, “Isn't ‘the scummiest kind of sexually offensive tripe’ exactly what we always used to say people had to put up with in a free country?”
The results of the case will play a large role in determining the right to free speech on the Internet. Even if the lawsuit fails, the outing of anonymous posters may cause others to think twice before posting offensive remarks. “It might remind some potential would-be defamers that their anonymity may not be secure,” says UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.
Headline Link: Yale students set to reveal poster’s identity
A federal judge in New Haven turned down a motion by poster “AK47” to quash a subpoena that helped reveal his identity. The defamation case will go forward with the identities of AK47 and several other posters being named in court papers. John Williams, AK47’s court-appointed lawyer who has not met the poster, spoke out against the decision. “Free speech takes another hit,” he said.
Source: Yale Daily News
Background: AutoAdmit harassment and lawsuit
The Washington Post wrote about the threats against the plaintiffs in March 2007. It described the sexual threats made against them and the difficulty they had landing jobs. “I didn't understand what I'd done to deserve it,” said one of them. “I also felt kind of scared because it was someone in my community who was threatening physical and sexual violence and I didn't know who.”
Source: The Washington Post
On June 12, 2007, the students filed a lawsuit anonymously against AutoAdmit’s former chief educational director Anthony Ciolli and 28 anonymous posters in the U.S. District Court in Connecticut. The charges included defamation, infliction of emotional distress and portrayal of the victims in false light. “It’s bringing the right to protect yourself against offensive words and images into the 21st century,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney David Rosen, who is working pro bono.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
After the suit was announced, Ciolli lost his job offer from Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge. He was dropped from the suit in November and, in March 2008, he countersued for libel, false light and tortuous interference with contract.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
In November 2007, the prosecution amended the complaint, dropping Ciolli and adding 11 more posters. Its 19-page amended complaint included a catalog of offensive comments on AutoAdmit and emails sent to Yale law professors about the plaintiffs.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
In January 2008, the court granted the plaintiffs the right to uncover the anonymous posters’ names. A month later, they announced that they had uncovered the identity of AK47—who had written, “Women named Jill and [Doe II] should be raped” on AutoAdmit—through a subpoena to his ISP. AK47 filed a motion to quash the subpoena, which he wrote himself and was, according to Ciolli’s former lawyer, “poorly drafted.”
Source: Citizen Media Law Project
AK47 wrote a bizarre, rambling six-page letter to the plaintiff’s attorneys in which he claims innocence, begs to be dropped from the case and threatens to create a Web site publishing personal information about the plaintiffs. About his rape comment, he writes, “No one … would ever consider this an injurous or actionable comment. It's a suggestion, not a threat; it's a stupid opinion, not a harmful assertion of fact or ‘description of sexual violence,’ whatever that means.”
Source: The Legal Satyricon
Opinion & Analysis: Should the AutoAdmit posters have a right to anonymous free speech?
Yes
University of Wisconsin law professor and blogger Ann Althouse writes, “I want to see "the scummiest kind of sexually offensive tripe" protected. … I just want to remind people to keep our free speech bearings. We have lost our way if we've forgotten the importance of protecting speech that is ‘scummy’ and ‘offensive’ and ‘tripe.’”
Source: Althouse
Jarret Cohen, the owner and administrator of AutoAdmit.com, wrote an opinion piece in Harvard Law School’s The Record in which he defends his site’s right to free speech. He writes, “I have always felt that the diversity of opinions—even unpopular opinions—on the site is a good thing. I also believe that people should have the right to comment on controversial subjects without fear of being persecuted, just as on mundane subjects.” He believes the best way to “minimize the effect of hurtful speech without compromising the Internet's virtue of free expression” is to allow users to issue responses to offensive comments that appear on Google searches.
Source: The Record (Harvard Law School)
Mark Randazza, a lawyer who represented Ciolli cites a theory by a Big Law Board poster that message board posters are like actors and their comments shouldn’t be interpreted as their own beliefs. Randazza writes, “I am certain that the real-life people behind these monikers are nothing like their online personas. And, I don’t expect them to be.”
Source: The Legal Satyricon
No
Feministe’s Jill Filipovic, who has been the target of AutoAdmit posts and was the Jill referred to in “Women named Jill and [Doe II] should be raped,” addresses AK47’s First Amendment rights. “Identifying anonymous internet commenters can have a real chilling effect, and I don’t think that people deserve to be outed simply for saying things that others don’t like—even if those things are sexist or racist or offensive,” she writes. “But AK47 is trying to carve out a right for himself that doesn’t exist anywhere in the real world. This isn’t about being offensive, it’s about destroying the reputation of a private citizen, and about threatening and intimidating them. Libel, slander and defamation are actionable, and you don’t get to say whatever you want about someone without consequences just because you post it on the internet under a fake name."
Source: Feministe
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who has defended AutoAdmit’s right to free speech, analyzed the potential liability of the posters. He writes, “Some of the statements mentioned in the complaint may well be libelous, for instance the ones that accuse plaintiff of having herpes, and of being sexually promiscuous (assuming the statements are false, which I expect they are), or at least false plus highly offensive (which in these circumstances would suffice for a false light claim). They are on matters of private concern and about a private figure, so the defendants would be liable for actual, presumed, and punitive damages.”
Source: Volokh Conspiracy
Andrew Keen, author of “Cult of the Amateur,” discusses Internet free speech and the 1995 Supreme Court case McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, which ruled that anonymous free speech was a “shield from the tyranny of the majority.” Keen believes that the McIntyre precedent applies only to political speech and not to the kind of online harassment seen in the AutoAdmit case. “Such cases indicate that the Supreme Court soon might need to rethink the civic value of anonymous speech in the Digital Age,” he says. “Today, when cowardly anonymity is souring Internet discourse, it really is hard to understand how anonymous speech is vital to a free society.”
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Blog De Novo criticizes the notion that the posters have a right to avoid public ridicule through the revealing of their identity while maintaining the right to ridicule others. “You read that correctly: Cohen's community should not have to worry that their own voluntary actions will make them Google-findable by employers, but to hell with those who are involuntarily made Googleable by that community and who want to be able to track those harassers down,” it writes.
Source: De Novo
Reference: The AutoAdmit lawsuit
The Citizen Media Law Project provides a timeline of the case and a collection of court documents.
Source: Citizen Media Law Project
© 2013 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
