On October 29, 2007, a lawyer for the Galveston Independent School District sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sandra Tetley, who operates a "watchdog" blog about the school district called GISD Watch.

We have not been able to obtain a copy of the school district's letter, but, according to the Galveston County Daily News, the letter demanded that Tetley remove what it called libelous statements and other "legally offensive" statements posted by her and anonymous users of her site. The postings complained about in the letter apparently accused district officials of lying, manipulation, falsifying budget numbers, using their positions for personal gain, and violating open meetings laws, among other things. The letter indicated that the school district would sue Tetley if she refused to meet its demands.

Tetley retained a local lawyer who sent a response letter to the district's lawyer on November 8, arguing that Tetley could not be held liable for the statements of others and characterizing the statements at issue as opinions. Tetley has not removed the offending posts and has announced her intention to defend the suit vigorously.

On November 9, school superintendent Lynne Cleveland issued a statement recommending that the district not pursue legal action against Tetley. Cleveland reasoned that she did not want to pull attention away from educating the district's children any longer. It is not clear at present whether the school district has taken any further steps.

Justin Leonard runs the websites infomercialratings.com and infomercialscams.com. These websites give consumers the opportunity to voice their criticisms and defenses of various products and services. Pages on these websites are devoted to criticisms and defenses of Video Professor, Inc., a Colorado company that develops and sells video tutorials on a variety of computer-related topics. Apparently, a number of anonymous posters made critical statements about Video Professor's products on these forum pages.

On July 11, 2007, Video Professor's president sent a letter to Justin Leonard, requesting that Leonard provide the company with contact information for each person who had posted comments to his websites relating to Video Professor. Leonard did not respond to this request.

In August 2007, Video Professor filed a John Doe lawsuit against 100 anonymous defendants (and some anonymous corporations and LLCs too!) in federal court in Colorado. The complaint includes claims for violations of the Lanham Act, violations of a Colorado consumer protection statute, tortious interference with business relations, and common law product disparagement/defamation. The complaint states that the anonymous defendants made false and defamatory statements about Video Professor's products, but does not identify any specific statements.

Video Professor moved ex parte for an order authorizing it to conduct discovery, in the form of third-party subpoenas requiring the recipients to produce documents identifying the anonymous posters. The court granted the motion.

On September 6, 2007, Justin Leonard's company, Leonard Fitness, Inc., received a subpoena, requesting that it produce identifying information for the author of every post on Leonard's websites relating to Video Professor. Along with the subpoena, Video Professor provided a check for $40.81 to compensate Leonard for his expenses in complying with the subpoena.

The Public Citizen Litigation Group took up the matter on behalf of Leonard and sent a letter to Video Professor's counsel objecting to the subpoena and laying out the reasons why, in its view, the subpoena was invalid.

Specifically, the letter argued that the subpoena encroached upon the rights of the anonymous defendants to engage in anonymous speech on the Internet without meeting the legal requirements necessary to justify disclosure of their identities. It also argued that the subpoena was unduly burdensome because it called for information relating to all postings about Video Professor on Leonard's sites, rather than identifying which postings were allegedly defamatory or otherwise unlawful. Finally, the letter stressed that the check provided with the subpoena was not sufficient to compensate Leonard for the work he would have to do to comply with the subpoena.

Communications ensued between Public Citizen and counsel for Video Professor. Video Professor narrowed the list of anonymous posters to 43. It also endeavored to provide Public Citizen with evidence supporting its allegations for each of the postings.

On or around October 18, 2007, Public Citizen sent a notice to each of the 43 posters identified by Video Professor. The letter informed the posters of the pendency of the lawsuit and the request for identifying information about them. It encouraged them to hire a lawyer and explained that Leonard would not produce any documents before October 31, 2007, in order to to give them the opportunity to file a motion to quash the subpoena in federal court. It also indicated that Public Citizen had asked Video Professor for evidence to support its claims, and that Public Citizen (on behalf of Leonard) would move to quash the subpoena should it determine that Video Professor had not done so.

On October 19, 2007, Public Citizen sent Video Professor a letter, explaining that it had sent the notice. The letter also questioned the legal adequacy of the Lanham Act claims and the adequacy of Video Professor's factual showing on the defamation claims. It requested more documents to establish, among other things, the falsity of the statements at issue.

We are not aware of the filing of any motion to quash yet.

Justin Leonard runs the websites infomercialratings.com and infomercialscams.com. These websites give users of infomerical products the opportunity to voice their criticisms and defenses of these products and associated sales tactics. Pages on these websites are devoted to criticisms and defenses of Video Professor, Inc., a Colorado company that develops and sells video tutorials on a variety of computer-related topics. Apparently, a number of anonymous posters made critical statements about Video Professor's products on these forum pages.

In August 2007, Video Professor filed a John Doe lawsuit against 100 anonymous defendants (and some anonymous corporations and LLCs too!) in federal court in Colorado. The complaint includes claims for violations of the Lanham Act, violations of a Colorado consumer protection statute, tortious interference with business relations, and common law product disparagement/defamation. The complaint states that the anonymous defendants made false and defamatory statements about Video Professor's products, but does not identify any specific statements.

Video Professor moved ex parte for an order authorizing it to conduct discovery, in the form of third-party subpoenas requiring the recipients to produce documents identifying the anonymous posters. The court granted the motion.

On September 6, 2007, Justin Leonard's company, Leonard Fitness, Inc., received a subpoena, requesting that it produce identifying information for the author of every post on Leonard's websites relating to Video Professor. Along with the subpoena, Video Professor provided a check for $40.81 to compensate Leonard for his expenses in complying with the subpoena.

The Public Citizen Litigation Group took up the matter on behalf of Leonard and sent a letter to Video Professor's counsel objecting to the subpoena and laying out the reasons why, in its view, the subpoena was invalid.

Specifically, the letter argued that the subpoena encroached upon the rights of the anonymous defendants to engage in anonymous speech on the Internet without meeting the legal requirements necessary to justify disclosure of their identities. It also argued that the subpoena was unduly burdensome because it called for information relating to all postings about Video Professor on Leonard's sites, rather than identifying which postings were allegedly defamatory or otherwise unlawful. Finally, the letter stressed that the check provided with the subpoena was not sufficient to compensate Leonard for the work he would have to do to comply with the subpoena.

Communications ensued between Public Citizen and counsel for Video Professor. Video Professor narrowed the list of anonymous posters to 43. It also endeavored to provide Public Citizen with evidence supporting its allegations for each of the postings.

On or around October 18, 2007, Public Citizen sent a notice to each of the 43 posters identified by Video Professor. The letter informed the posters of the pendency of the lawsuit and the request for identifying information about them. It encouraged them to hire a lawyer and explained that Leonard would not produce any documents before October 31, 2007, in order to to give them the opportunity to file a motion to quash the subpoena in federal court. It also indicated that Public Citizen had asked Video Professor for evidence to support its claims, and that Public Citizen (on behalf of Leonard) would move to quash the subpoena should it determine that Video Professor had not done so.

On October 19, 2007, Public Citizen sent Video Professor a letter, explaining that it had sent the notice. The letter also questioned the legal adequacy of the Lanham Act claims and the adequacy of Video Professor's factual showing on the defamation claims. It requested more documents to establish, among other things, the falsity of the statements at issue.

Update:

12/26/2007 - Video Professor filed a notice of voluntary dismissal, ending the case.

07/10/2009 - Consumer Law and Policy Blog reports that the websites infomercialratings.com and infomercialscams.com have been taken down.

Krowne operates The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter (ml-implode.com, mortgageimplode.com), a Web site that posts information about mortgage lending companies that have gone out of business or are expected to go out of business. On April 18, 2007, Krowne posted an e-mail from an anonymous source claiming to be a recently-laid-off employee of mortgage lender Loan Center of California (“LCC”). The e-mail stated that LCC was shutting down and that only a “skeleton crew” of employees remained to “clean up the mess.” It also accused LCC of fraud and various other improper business activities.

According to Krowne's case filings, LCC attorney Michael Huber contacted him within hours of the e-mail's posting. Krowne says he was threatened with a lawsuit, and thus chose to remove the e-mail and all mention of LCC from his site. LCC filed suit nonetheless, bringing claims of defamation, unfair business practices, and interference with contract. (Please see the CMLP's Database entry for the related Loan Center v. Krowne lawsuit.)

Mike Madison and two co-bloggers published Blog-Lebo, which covers matters of local interest in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

In September 2007, Madison posted about a neighborhood dispute that arose when a local homeowner re-landscaped his backyard and blocked (or threatened to block) a stone path that was popularly understood to be protected by a recorded easement. Many readers commented on the post. One commenter identified the homeowner by name and another (apparently one of Madison's co-bloggers) commented that the owner, who is a lawyer, should have known better than to buy real estate without checking the record for easements.

Days later, Madison and his co-bloggers received a letter from the lawyer/homeowner demanding that they remove the post or face a lawsuit for defamation. Madison, a lawyer and law professor experienced in Internet law, was willing to stand up against what he saw as legally and factually baseless claims. His co-bloggers had a different reaction altogether -- one wanted to take the post down immediately, and the other withdrew from the blog. (It looks like the second co-blogger also withdrew at some point later.) In a subsequent blog post on his madisonian.net blog, Madison sums up the dilemma he faced as follows:

Blogging lesson number one: All of the noblest rhetoric from Chilling Effects and the EFF and law faculty colleagues is terrific, but it doesn’t mean a lot when your co-blogger turns to jelly. Should lawyers blog with non-lawyers? Maybe not; maybe lawyers simply see the world in a different light. My co-bloggers and I didn’t (and don’t) have a formal co-blogging agreement or liability-shielding arrangement, but even if we had, it’s clear that the dynamic would have played out essentially as it did. We had discussed dealing with hypothetical defamation claims, and I had walked through the immunity analysis under Section 230 of the CDA. All seemed well. But when push came to shove, the non-lawyers got extremely nervous. There was no trust. At that moment, our relative aversion to risk was quite different, and I felt that I couldn’t leave the post up if it meant that my co-blogger would remain frightened.

So down the post came.

Madison not only took down the "offending" post, but ended up suspending Blog-Lebo entirely (see his explanation for the suspension on Pittsblog). The surprise happy ending to the story is that Blog-Lebo's readers clamored for the blog to return, one of Madison's co-bloggers (Joe Polk) rethought the situation, and the blog is back up.

In October 1994, an unknown user posted statements on Prodigy's "Money Talk" bulletin board indicating that Stratton Oakmont, Inc., a Long Island securities brokerage firm, and its president, Daniel Porush, had committed criminal and fraudulent acts in connection with the initial public offering of Solomon-Page, Ltd. As a result, Stratton and Porush sued Prodigy and anonymous defendants in New York state court for defamation.

The plaintiffs argued that Prodigy should be considered a "publisher" of the anonymous poster's statements. Under the common law of defamation, if Prodigy were considered a publisher, it could be held liable for the statements of the unknown user. Conversely, if it were found to be merely a "distributor," it could not be held liable unless it knew or had reason to know about the allegedly defamatory statements.

"Money Talk" was, at the time, a widely read forum covering stocks, investments, and other business matters. Prodigy contracted with Charles Epstein to act as "Board Leader," a position entailing, in part, participation in board discussions, board promotional efforts, and board supervision. In its argument that Prodigy was a publisher of the defamatory statements, the plaintiffs pointed to representations Prodigy had made in various newspaper articles representing itself as an organization that exercised editorial control over the content on its servers.

In making their case, the plaintiffs also pointed to Prodigy's "content guidelines," which stated rules that users were expected to abide by, a software screening program which filtered out offensive language, and the employment of moderators or "Board Leaders" who were responsible for enforcing the content guidelines.

In May 1995, on the plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment, the court held that these representations and policies were sufficient to treat Prodigy as a publisher. In so holding, the court distinguished the case from an earlier one involving CompuServe, which was found merely to be an "electronic for-profit library" or repository and thus a passive distributor. In particular, the court pointed to Prodigy's creation of an "editorial staff of Board Leaders who have the ability to continually monitor incoming transmissions." The court noted, however, that bulletin boards should normally be considered distributors when they do not exercise significant editorial control, as Prodigy had done.

Prodigy moved for reconsideration of the May 1995 decision, but the party's settled in October 1995, apparently before the motion was decided.

In passing the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which, among other things, established immunity for internet service providers for publishing "information provided by another information content provider," 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1), the House explicitly stated its intent to overturn the result reached in the Prodigy case. See H.R. Conf. Rep. 104-58, at 194.