The First Amendment does not say anything about a right to anonymity, much less guarantee it. It protects you against libel suits, assuming what you said was true (an oversimplification) but it doesn't say that you are guaranteed to be anonymous. It also says the CONGRESS shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. So even if Google, which is not the U.S. Congress, wanted to stand up for the First Amendment, it would have nothing to say here because this case was not about a law enacted by Congress and because the issue was anonymity, not freedom of speech.
@MarthaMessalla: You seem to have missed about a hundred years of mission creep, there. The redneck owners of diners down south were not the gumint, neither, yet could they be bound over for denying equal protection of the law for deciding by race who was worthy of their rancid greaseburgers. Same with lynchlaw. Same with - and this one flabbergasts me, who am unflabbergastable - a private mall of corporate entities cannot halt the dispensing of idiot pamphlets in its environs. Private property owners are held to the First Amendment. Then we go into the workplace ...
I don't think I've seen unflabbergastable on Gawker before.
How long until "skank" becomes a meme (verb) for outing some libelous creep masquerading as a real person on the internet, cf, "She badmouthed Carrie on a blog in Carrie's name, so Carrie skanked her?"
What about the people who have to hire lawyers to litigate against the subpoena issuers? That, too, could get really expensive. A company can write off litigation costs as a business expense.
Not much sympathy for Rosemary here--although for my money she's rather cuter than her foe, but PLEASE do not libel our giant Japanese lizard thingie out of this. MechaGodzilla would have destroyed the Earth, not to mention Tokyo, whereas the G-man after a rocky start in the '50s was ultimately on our side and had little Japanese kids cheering him on.
Did we ever actually settle the question of whether or not this woman is, in fact, a skank? I'm sorry the case resolved the way it did. I was really looking forward to discovery on that.
09/16/09
09/15/09
09/15/09
I don't think I've seen unflabbergastable on Gawker before.
09/08/09
09/08/09
I give it a week.
09/08/09
09/08/09
09/08/09
What about the people who have to hire lawyers to litigate against the subpoena issuers? That, too, could get really expensive. A company can write off litigation costs as a business expense.
09/08/09
-Anonymous Deric
08/25/09
08/24/09
08/24/09
08/24/09
08/24/09
08/24/09
08/24/09
08/24/09
08/24/09