From the website:Cyberbullying

June 27, 2007
Legal Test of Online Anonymity Looms


You have to wonder sometimes where we are going as a society when everyone seems to have an anonymous persona and many feel they can say anything they want about anyone because they think they are anonymous (or at least very hard to trace without law enforcement or other assistance). Now two women at Yale Law School are suing a college discussion board called AudoAdmit that gives glimpses into law school admissions policies, post-graduate social networking and the hiring practices of major law firms. The site is widely used by law students for information on schools and firms, but is also known as a venue for racist and sexist remarks and career-damaging rumors. Now it's at the heart of a defamation lawsuit that legal experts say could test the anonymity of the Internet.

After facing lewd comments and threats by posters, the two women at Yale filed a suit on June 8 in U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., that includes subpoenas for 28 anonymous users of the site, which has generated more than 7 million posts since 2004. "The harassment they were subjected to was quite grotesque," said Brian Leiter, a professor at University of Texas Law School. "Any judge who looks at this is going to be really shocked, and particularly shocked because these appear to be law students." The suit is being watched closely to see if the posters are unmasked, a step that could make anonymous chat room users more circumspect. It also underlines the growing difficulty of protecting reputations online as the Web is used increasingly to screen prospective employees and romantic partners.

Have you talked to your kids about their feeling about and experiences with online anonymity? Remind them that this kind of targeting could happen to anyone at anytime and is a form of cyberbullying. What do they think should happen to people who post libelous remarks? Should they be so hard to track down?

Posted at 10:21 AM in Cyberbullying, Cybercrime, Privacy, Social Networking | Permalink | Comments (0)