Beware, Internet Commenters: Justice Is Watching

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Nov 9, 2009 8:40PM

The practice of posting nasty, anonymous comments on the Internet is as old as the Internet itself. We imagine the very first thing on the Internet ever went a little something like this:

I HAVE CREATED THE INTERNET! by user AlGore: "Hello, there, I have created the Internet. Enjoy!"

Re: I HAVE CREATED THE INTERNET! by user CartmanRulz:
"n00b!"

But being able to get your snark on while hidden behind the barrier of a (mostly) secret identity could (maybe) be a thing of the past if the precedent set in Buffalo Grove today is allowed to stand. Buffalo Grove trustee Lisa Stone had been involved in what's been described as a heated campaign earlier this spring and the day before the election, a comment was posted on a Daily Herald story that said "deeply disturbing" things about Stone's 15-year-old son, who had gone toe-to-toe with the commenter in the story's comments section (several comments, which we assume are the offending comments, have been removed).

So Stone turned the tables on commenter "Hipcheck16" and went to court to fight for the right to learn that user's real name. Today, Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Lawrence ruled that, yes, Stone is "entitled" to learn Hipcheck16's real identity. Judge Lawrence had previously required Hipcheck16's internet provider, Comcast, to turn over the necessary information to him before reaching today's decision. The decision means only Stone and a process server will learn the identity should Stone decide to proceed with a threatened lawsuit against Hipcheck16, whose lawyer has promised an appeal.

Of course, now we reach that point of the slippery First Amendment slope. If such the ruling is upheld, it could set the precedent for future lawsuits and, quite possibly, a flood of needless lawsuits as a result of people getting their feelings hurt on a message board. Even if the courts were to pick-and-choose which one is worthy and dismiss the rest, just that extra workload would bog down the courts even further. Or a judge could rule the responsibility is with moderators rather than the commenters themselves. If Stone's son engaged the commenter as the DH reports, is he at least partly responsible? Where do we draw the line? Does this carry over to real life where one can be sued for saying something nasty on the playground? The can of worms that's opened by this whole mess gives us a headache and the idea of trying to moderate the entire internet is something that isn't even remotely possible, which makes our headache worse.