San Jose, CA - On Friday, August 10, attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) successfully defended the speech rights of two anonymous Yahoo! message board posters. A California State court found that the right of Internet posters to speak anonymously outweighed a company's desire to unmask their identities.
The case involves a subpoena issued by Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc., of Oklahoma (PPLS) requesting the identity of eight posters on Yahoo!'s "Pre-Paid" message board, an online forum for discussions related to the company. EFF represents two of the J. Does PPLS subpoenaed to unmask their identities as part of a dispute between PPLS and another (identified) person.
PPLS argued that it needed the Does' identities to determine whether the Internet posters had to comply with a voluntary injunction preventing former sales associates who work for a competitor from revealing PPLS's trade secrets. EFF senior staff attorney Lee Tien argued that the messages cited by PPLS indicated only that the Does were critical of the company and how it treats its associates. Revealing the identity of these anonymous speakers would give PPLS the opportunity to punish the anonymous posters simply for criticizing the company.
Ruling from the bench, the Honorable Neil Cabrinha of the Santa Clara County Superior Court quashed the subpoena to Yahoo! requesting the posters' identities. Judge Cabrinha agreed with EFF that the messages did not appear to violate the injunction, and therefore the First Amendment protection of anonymous speech outweighed PPLS's interest in learning the identity of the speakers.
"This is a great victory for anonymous speech," said EFF's Tien. "I believe Judge Cabrinha's ruling will signal other companies that judges will not permit corporate executives to abuse the courts in ferreting out their critics."
"EFF will continue to step in and fight for the right of individuals to speak anonymously," said Lauren Gelman, EFF's director of public policy. "We expect to see many similar decisions recognizing that First Amendment protections do not disappear just because someone chooses to speak online."
