Appeals Court: Anonymous Posters Can't Hide On The Net

A Florida Appeals Court has upheld a lower court's ruling that ordered America Online and Yahoo to reveal information they have about individuals who posted under pseudonyms on their message boards.

In a decision filed last week, the Third District Court of Appeals
in Miami upheld a decision by District Court Judge Eleanor
Schockett, who agreed in May that J. Erik Hvide of Fort Lauderdale
had a right to find out who was posting what he felt were
defamatory statement about him on financial message boards.

Schockett ordered Yahoo and AOL to identify eight "John Does" who
claimed online that Hvide may have violated securities violations
as the head of Hvide Marine.

Hvide was fired as chairman and chief executive officer of the
company in the spring of 1999, just before the company filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors.

While the case is not the first ruling to ferret out anonymous
online posters, it is the first to reach an Appeals Court. After
her June ruling, Schockett had stayed her order until the John Does
could complete their appeal, backed by the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU).

A report by the Associate Press today quoted ACLU lawyer Lyrissa
Lidsky as saying that the ruling was "not a defeat for all the
other John Does in the pipeline" with similar cases, because the
Appeal Court did not provide detailed reasons for its decision.

Lidsky said the ACLU had wanted the court to determine whether
Hvide had actually been defamed before seeking to have the
anonymous posters revealed.