Anonymity

When fashion model Liskula Cohen sued Google, she took aim at one of the key online tenets: On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

Disguised in comforting anonymity, bloggers and online commenters can type some pretty nasty things – accusations and language that they’d never say to people face-to-face. However, the masquerade ball may have just ended.

Ms. Cohen brought Google to court, demanding that the company reveal the identity of a blogger that she says defamed her. The NYC-gossip blogger mocked Cohen and called the model a “40-something” who “may have been hot 10 years ago.” Cohen was 36 at the time. The post, which ran on Google’s Blogger service, has since been removed.

Judge Joan Madden agreed with Cohen and ordered Google to give up the name. As the Times reports: The New York Supreme Court Justice “rejected the blogger’s claim that the blogs ’serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting’, and should not be treated as factual assertions.”

On “Good Morning America” yesterday, the Giorgio Armani and Versace model told Dianne Sawyer that the online taunter was actually an acquaintance –“an irrelevant person in my life … that girl who was always there.” Now that she knew the blogger’s identity, Cohen was second guessing a libel lawsuit.

But other bloggers should watch out. Justice Madden just rewrote the assumed rules for online decency.

Thank you Barry, we take note and continue to tidy our data base and are always aware of the odd "bitter"poster.

I did a previous post on Forums which was actually taken from the Guardian news paper and also caused a bit of a stir, but life goes on.