John Doe vs. John Doe: Virginia Court's Decision in Online 'John Doe' Case Hailed by Free-Speech Advocates

[Ray Dillinger]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:

>In what was apparently the first Internet defamation case to involve both
>an anonymous plaintiff and anonymous defendants, the Supreme Court of
>Virginia refused to grant an unidentified company access to America
>Online's confidential subscriber information unless the firm agreed to
>reveal its identity.

I'm missing something here.  How is it even possible for an anonymous 
plaintiff to show defamation?  Defamation is identity-linked.


>The plaintiff in the case, named in court documents only as "Anonymous
>Publicly Traded Company," dropped its efforts to subpoena AOL after
>agreeing on Wednesday to the dismissal of a related case in Indiana.

Hrm.  Okay, "related case" - so this company isn't actually anonymous, 
it's pseudonymous.  Still, unless they've got reputation capital in 
the pseudonym (and it doesn't sound like they do), defamation against 
it just doesn't scan. 

>Douglas M. Palais, the lawyer for the plaintiff company, declined to
>explain why his client had dropped its case.

Duh.  They expected him to betray trust, I suppose?

>While the litigation is no longer pending, the ruling handed down in
>Virginia could set a precedent for similar lawsuits across the country. In
>its decision, the Virginia court said that an anonymous plaintiff could be
>given subpoena power only if it would suffer exceptional harm, such as a
>social stigma or extraordinary economic retaliation, as a result of
>revealing its identity.


Hmmm.  I'm not a lawyer, but I think that's over-broad.  I'd agree 
with an anonymous plaintiff having no subpeona power in a *defamation* 
case, because until the identity is known the crime cannot be 
assessed.  But this reads like they intend for this test to apply 
in *all* cases, and that's probably not right.  Also, this sounds 
more like a pseudonymous plaintiff than an anonymous one, and there 
*is* such a thing as defamation against a pseudonym. 

Also, there's a real question here.  Say I've got a pseudonym such 
as my unsigned PGP key, and I've been using it for years.  Now 
someone says "messages signed by this key are from a child 
molesting sodomite." 

On the one hand, there's a defamation case because the pseudonym's 
value is reduced.  It loses a lot of reputation capital.  

On the other hand, if I now step forward and say "Excuse me, that's 
my key and I never molested a child in my life -- and I've also 
never been to the mideast, let alone the city of Sodom...", my 
identity is linked to the pseudonym, which damages its value 
further.  Also, I may suffer "extraordinary harm" as a result -- 
there still being people here and there who think stoning anyone 
suspected of child molesting is better than finding out whether 
it's actually true.  

The precedent seems to indicate that a pseudonym cannot be defended
under the law.  It can only be destroyed.

The wording of the decision seems to indicate that the judge does 
not understand the difference between anonymity and pseudonymity.

				Bear