A former shipping company executive, J. Erik Hvide, claimed
he was libelled on financial message boards hosted by Yahoo! and
AOL. The companies themselves were not sued. The reason is that
earlier court rulings in the US protect ISPs from responsibility
for messages posted on their sites. Instead, Hvide sued anonymous
individuals who claimed he had been guilty of mismanagement and
criminal behaviour. The court papers referred only to “John
Doe”.
At the time of the district court’s ruling on this case, AOL and
Yahoo! were ordered to identify the eight responsible individuals.
It appears that this order was appealed by the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) which sought to protect the identities of
those involved.
The ACLU argued that the court should first rule on whether
Hvide have been defamed before naming those who made the comments.
However, the court disagreed, apparently without explaining its
reasoning. The ACLU is said to be considering whether to
appeal.
