On Sat, Apr 21, 2001 at 03:56:44PM -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
> I'm a bit confused by Tim's use of the nym John Doe,
> since in cases like that, the John Doe isn't the sysop,
> John Doe is/are the unknown-to-the-court person or persons
> who made the allegedly libelous comments,
> and the court is or is not deciding whether to force the
> known sysop to reveal the names of the Does.
I suspect that if the company really wanted to learn their identity,
they'd file a libel suit against those JDs. But instead, it tried
to serve subpoenas on them in an (ostensibly unrelated) lawsuit.
I'd withhold final judgement until I read the court documents instead
of news reports, but it seems to me that the judge did the right thing.
I'm all for technical methods, but that doesn't mean we have to accept
overly broad discovery requests as legitimate.
-Declan
