The frustrating quest for protection from anonymous Web surfers

Do website operators need to do more to protect our privacy when it comes to anonymous comments posted on their sites?

In February, an anonymous poster uploaded a Texas woman’s photo on the gossip blog TheDirty.com and wrote a message saying she had “herpes, is fat, is sexually promiscuous and uses cocaine. ” The poster asked whether the blog’s founder, Hooman Karamian, would still sleep with the woman, and he responded, “No, I don’t want to get infected.”

The woman, a 27-year-old paralegal, who apparently actually has herpes and wants to keep her identity secret during litigation, has sued the website operator for hosting the photo and the disparaging comments about her on his  site.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Chris Bell, the Houston lawyer who filed the lawsuit, said he doesn’t think Karamian should be protected under the federal Communications Decency Act provision that keeps Web providers from being liable for what’s posted by others.

“This guy has made a fortune off of embarrassing people,” Bell said. When Karamian adds comments validating what someone has submitted, Bell said, he has responsibility.

“We’ve got to do something whereby folks posting on the Internet are playing by defamation and privacy laws, too,” Bell said. It is illegal in Texas to publish private facts that, when revealed, would be offensive to a reasonable person and are not a legitimate public concern.

via Web post on herpes at center of La Porte woman’s suit | – Houston Chronicle.

This lawsuit raises lots of issues: whether websites are responsible for what their readers write, whether websites that encourage these kinds of conversations bear more responsibility than others, and what is considered an invasion of privacy online. Mentioned above, the Communications Decency Act is legislation that Congress passed to protect the free flow of information online by stating that websites could not be sued for carrying defamatory material.

There’s push back against that law though, in its protection for website operators at the expense of individuals. There are a number of lawsuits like this one, alleging online defamation and invasion of privacy, making their way through the court system. See, for example, this Portfolio Magazine article on such a suit filed by two Yale law students against AutoAdmit, a legal gossip site.

Website operators are starting to worry more seriously about the trouble their commenters may cause them. But for now, it’s a waiting game to see what the courts decide.