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Denver University Law Review’s Cyber Civil Rights symposium
posted by Danielle Citron
Just before Thanksgiving, Denver University Law Review hosted a symposium that used my work on cyber gender harassment as an excuse to bring together important cyberlaw/civil rights scholars, practitioners, and technologists to talk about the challenges to civil rights and civil liberties in our networked age. Although I’m going to be posting more on the terrific Cyber Civil Rights symposium in the future, I wanted to link readers to Eric Goldman’s wrap up of the conference on his important and always informative Technology and Marketing blog.
Eric was one of the superb participants along with Nancy Ehrenreich (Denver), Ed Felten (Princeton), Mary Anne Franks (Chicago), James Grimmelmann (New York Law), Robert Kaczorowski (Fordham), Sam Kamin (Denver), Jacqui Lipton (Case Western), Viva Moffat (Denver, who also did an amazing job spearheading and organizing the conference), Helen Norton (Colorado), Paul Ohm (Colorado), Wendy Seltzer (Colorado), John Soma (Denver), and Chris Wolff (Hogan & Hartson).
Here is Eric’s post:
The week before Thanksgiving, I attended an unusual symposium sponsored by the University of Denver Law Review entitled “Cyber Civil Rights: New Challenges for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in our Networked Age.” The symposium covered standard Cyberlaw topics, but the raison d’être was University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron’s two recent articles on online harassment of women: “Law’s Expressive Value in Combating Cyber Gender Harassment” (Michigan Law Review) and “Cyber Civil Rights” (Boston University Law Review). It is unusual for a law school to celebrate another school’s professor and her research, especially when the professor is fairly junior. Nevertheless, Danielle’s participation brought together academics from both the Cyberlaw and civil rights communities, which provided a rare and interesting mix of folks.. Read the rest of this post »
December 11, 2009 at 9:17 am
Posted in: Cyber Civil Rights
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Cyber Gender Harassment: “Skanks of NYC”
posted by Danielle Citron
Dan, Kaimi, and Elizabeth have offered some terrific insights on the issues raised by the court’s unmasking of the “Skanks of NYC” blogger. Kaimi’s post “Cyber Civil Rights vs Privacy in the ‘Skanks in NYC’ case” in particular did a superb job capturing the issue as discrimination. I write here to follow up on issues related to the case that folks have discussed with me.
Some have asked whether this case warrants treatment as a cyber civil rights issue since it “is just a girl cat fight.” To be sure, women can deprive other women of their right to be free of unequal treatment on the basis of their gender. But the larger concern is, for me, convincing skeptics to see the blog attacks on Ms. Cohen as more than just an interpersonal disagreement between two women, something that tort law can handily address on its own, but rather as gender discrimination. Tort law would not reach the harm experienced by Ms. Cohen, women, and society due to the blog’s interference with her right to equal treatment. It would not address the stigma that Ms. Cohen experienced a a result of the blog’s message that she had worth only as a sex object. Much like sexual harassment in the workplace, the blog suggested that Ms. Cohen constitutes an object of sexual derision, not a person worthy of respect. Moreover, they interfered with Ms. Cohen’s right to work as an equal. According to Ms. Cohen, potential employers asked her about the blog, which quite possibly deterred them and others from hiring her. In a world filled with aspiring models, employers might chose to work with someone who comes with less baggage, even if they do not believe the postings a wit. And the blog postings harm women as a group and a society as a whole by entrenching gender hierarchy in cyberspace. Whether current law would support such a claim is certainly in dispute, but such a law could be crafted. Such a law would play an important expressive role–it would change the social meaning of such harassment of women.
Indeed, as privacy scholar Ian Kerr suggested, maybe the media’s attention to the case can be attributed to its leering interest in a “battle” between two beautiful women? Maybe coverage of the issue reflects a deeper misogyny: the story has attracted so much attention because it produces an image of women as female wrestlers of sorts, battling it out in their bikinis?
August 26, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Posted in: Anonymity, Civil Rights, Cyber Civil Rights, Cyberlaw, Privacy, Uncategorized
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Skanks in New York, the First Amendment and Anonymous Posting on the Internet
posted by Elizabeth Nowicki
The recent “Skanks in New York” court case, which resulted in a New York state court ordering Google to provide identifying information about a blogger who posted offensive attacks on a model, has led to various privacy wonks, including our own Dan Solove, raising concerns about forcing Google to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger. It appears that some people worry that there is a First Amendment issue raised when asking Google to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger or some people worry that it is a violation of privacy for Google or internet service providers to reveal the identity of people who are anonymously blogging through there service.
This baffles me. Surely everyone who blogs using Google or who blogs through an internet service provider is or should be well aware that the provider of either the blog service or the internet service can figure out – and share – their identity. I cannot fathom the notion that anyone who anonymously blogs or uses the internet believes that their anonymity is guaranteed. Moreover, even if an anonymous poster does not realize that his/her identity is not guaranteed, how can there be a First Amendment issue or a privacy isuse if Google – a company, not a government entity, who has never promised to keep your identity a secret – reveals your identity?
If someone wants to say something with more anonymity than can be assured through the internet, write a letter and mail it in an unmarked envelope!
August 26, 2009 at 9:26 am
Posted in: Uncategorized
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Interview on Internet Anonymity on Above the Law
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at Above the Law, Kashmir Hill has posted a Q&A with me about the “Skanks in NYC” blogger case. She also discusses with me how and why I became interested in privacy law.
August 25, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Tort Law, Web 2.0
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Cyber Civil Rights vs Privacy in the “Skanks in NYC” case
posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger
As Dan rightly notes, the recent court order unmasking the anonymous author of the “Skanks in NYC” blog raises serious privacy concerns. He elaborates on those concerns in his post, arguing that the court used too low of a standard, that the lawsuit may have been frivolous, and that anonymity needs greater protection. Dan links to CyberSLAPP, an EFF project which combats abusive lawsuits that seek to unmask anonymous critics of corporations or public figures.
CyberSLAPP’s site contains a spirited defense of a right of anonymous criticism which reads, in part:
Why is anonymous speech important?
There are a wide variety of reasons why people choose to speak anonymously. Many use anonymity to make criticisms that are difficult to state openly to their boss, for example, or the principal of their children’s school. The Internet has become a place where persons who might otherwise be stigmatized or embarrassed can gather and share information and support victims of violence, cancer patients, AIDS sufferers, child abuse and spousal abuse survivors, for example. They use newsgroups, Web sites, chat rooms, message boards, and other services to share sensitive and personal information anonymously without fear of embarassment or harm. Some police departments run phone services that allow anonymous reporting of crimes; it is only a matter of time before such services are available on the Internet. Anonymity also allows “whistleblowers” reporting on government or company abuses to bring important safety issues to light without fear of stigma or retaliation. And human rights workers and citizens of repressive regimes around the world who want to share information or just tell their stories frequently depend on staying anonymous sometimes for their very lives.
Is anonymous speech a right?
Yes. Anonymous speech is presumptively protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Anonymous pamphleteering played an important role for the Founding Fathers, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, whose Federalist Papers were first published anonymously. And the Supreme Court has consistently backed up that tradition, ruling, for example, that an Ohio law requiring authors to put their names on campaign literature was a violation of the First Amendment. Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled that protecting anonymous speech has the same purpose as the First Amendment itself: to “protect unpopular individuals from retaliation and their ideas from suppression.”
Of course, any sensible person would be opposed to silencing today’s James Madisons or Alexander Hamiltons. Is this really the correct analogy here, though? Is Skanks in NYC like the Federalist Papers? Read the rest of this post »
August 25, 2009 at 11:40 am
Tags: Cyber Civil Rights, Privacy
Posted in: Blogging, Google & Search Engines, Privacy
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Can You Be Sued for Unmasking an Anonymous Blogger?
posted by Daniel Solove
A model named Liskula Cohen was being attacked on a blog called Skanks in NYC. The author of the Skanks blog was anonymous. Kashmir Hill reports:
Cohen started pursuing the defamation suit against the anonymous ‘Skanks’ blogger in January after discovering the site, on which the blogger called Cohen a skank, a ho, and an old hag, among other nasty things, and posted photos of her, taken from various websites. Since Cohen needed the identity of the blogger in order to file the lawsuit against her, a judge in Manhattan granted Cohen’s request to force Google to reveal the e-mail address and IP address of the alleged defamer.
Cohen has since dropped her $3 million lawsuit. The unmasked blogger — Rosemary Port — plans to sue Google for $15 million for breaching its fiduciary duty to defend her anonymity.
Over at CyberSLAPP, a website maintained by EFF (disclosure: I’m on EFF’s advisory board), ACLU, CDT, EPIC, and Public Citizen, they have posted documents from the case, including the court’s order to Google to unmask the author of Skanks.
CyberSLAPP seeks to combat frivolous lawsuits to reveal another’s identity:
CyberSLAPP cases typically involve a person who has posted anonymous criticisms of a corporation or public figure on the Internet. The target of the criticism then files a frivolous lawsuit just so they can issue a subpoena to the Web site or Internet Service Provider (ISP) involved, discover the identity of their anonymous critic, and intimidate or silence them.
The Skanks in NYC raises a lot of interesting issues. I’ll tackle a few in this post.
1.Was Cohen’s lawsuit frivolous? Cohen might have a decent defamation lawsuit, but she subsequently dropped it when she found out Cohen’s identity. This behavior indicates she was using the lawsuit only to unmask the blogger. I agree with CyberSLAPP that such a practice should be restricted.
August 25, 2009 at 7:04 am
Posted in: Anonymity, Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Tort Law, Web 2.0
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