In a case that both sides acknowledge has “novel issues of national importance,” a South Florida appellate court has endorsed a lower court ruling that people posting messages on the Internet have no right to anonymity.
“This is a major step in civilizing the Internet,” said Bruce Fischman, who represents Erik Hvide, a former chief executive of Hvide Marine in Ft. Lauderdale. Hvide is suing “John Does,” who used such screen names as Justthefactsjack, for allegedly making defamatory statements about him.
“If all anonymity is removed from the Internet, we are going to end up significantly stifling conversation,” said Christopher A. Hansen, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who helps represent the John Does in the case.
Though there are now more than 100 John Doe anonymity cases winding their way through the nation’s courts, the Hvide case is prominent because the ACLU has picked it to make a stand about freedom on the Internet.
“They have gotten smacked down twice on this,” Fischman said. “This means people are responsible for comments they make on the Internet.”
“This was a big deal because it would have been the first time that an appellate court would have been discussing the rights of these John Doe defendants,” said Christopher Leigh, a Ft. Lauderdale attorney who represents the still-anonymous defendants in the Hvide case.
Lyrissa Lidsky, a law professor at the University of Florida who had worked with the ACLU on the case, said, “We thought this might be the case for an appellate court to set a historic precedent about the 1st Amendment in cyberspace.”
Leigh and the ACLU had asked the three-judge panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeals to overturn a May decision by Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Eleanor Schockett ordering Yahoo! and AOL to reveal John Doe’s identity.
“Give them anonymity and nothing holds them back,” Schockett said. “That’s why the Ku Klux Klan wears hoods.”
In its ruling, the appellate court simply refused to review Schockett’s decision.
The case is one of many in which large corporations and top executives are suing to discover the identity of their critics on the Internet.
In Hvide’s case, it is alleged that the anonymous postings caused the stock price to fall and the board of directors to fire him.
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