Court Rules Anonymous Forum Postings Protected by First Amendment

Right of Internet "Trolls" to Vent and Blemish Businesses, Franchisors, Franchisees and Staff Is Upheld

SAN JOSE (Blue MauMau) - A California court of appeals ruled last week that anonymous guest postings online are protected and can remain anonymous. COO Lisa Krinsky sued a forum publisher, Yahoo, to remove offending remarks and release the names of 10 anonymous posters so that she could pursue them. In 2005 she and two other SFBC corporate officers saw scathing forum postings that belittled them. Ms. Krinsky felt that the messages of several "trolls", an Internet slang for posters who disingenuously troll or inflame discussion threads, left defamatory personal messages specifically to damage the brand and drive down the value of the stock price.

According to Ars Technica, an information technology news blog, the derogatory postings referred to the trio as "management consisting of boobs, losers and crooks." One troll (Doe 6) said of Ms. Krinsky, "I will reciprocate felatoin [sic] with Lisa even though she has fat thighs, a fake medical degree, 'queefs' and has poor feminine hygiene."

California’s Sixth District Court of Appeal weighed both sides in pages and pages of argument, summarizing the elements of what is usually considered libel, stating,"[a]ccusing a woman of unchastity [...] calling somebody a crook . . . saying that they have a fake medical degree, accusing someone of a criminal act, accusing someone—impinging [sic] their integrity to practice in their chosen profession historically have been libel per se."

Nonetheless, Judge Elia overturned an earlier lower court ruling. He issued a judgment in favor of the anonymous guest, concluding that although the messages were unquestionably "offensive and demeaning," in the end such tantrums would not overturn the forum poster's first amendment right. The postings were not assertions of "actual fact" and therefore not actionable. Besides never knowing the names of the forum posters, the plaintiff was also ordered to pay the legal fees of Doe 6.

Such anonymous postings and pseudonyms are fairly standard on the Internet. Still, the franchise industry's few trade journals have typically not welcomed such openness. That is changing. Not only because of sites like Blue MauMau, but also because there are millions of online journals, newspapers and blogsites that accept anonymous guest postings.

Those postings can work against both the franchisor and the franchise owner. Ben Worthen, the lead writer for the Wall Street Journal's business technology articles and blogs, reminds the Journal's business leaders of the importance of developing a strategy to deal with anonymous criticism.

"One of the new challenges of the Internet age is that anyone can publish information about your business. They can do it in forums you have no control over and they can do it while remaining anonymous. Often, a business has no recourse. (To be clear: The ability for anyone to publish anything is also one of the best things about the Internet, but this is a post about the downside.) In the worst cases, these posts can cause irreparable damage to a brand, drive a stock price lower, or cause great embarrassment if it turns out the culprit is your CEO."

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Further reading:

• Krinsky v. Doe H030767 (PDF, Court Ruling)
• California court bars unmasking of Web critic
• Web Rage: Protected by the First Amendment
• Taking the High Road, Rhonda Sanderson of P.R. firm Sanderson and Associates suggests 5 ways for franchisors to deal with blog criticisms

Publisher's note: I remind our franchise owners, leaders, experts, staff, readers, guests and members that Blue MauMau will never release confidential information to individually identify our posters. NEVER. Our readers are starved for straight talk in the franchise industry. We can only receive such information from the front lines by having posters' confidence that information about them will not be released to displeased companies. Nor will we release any individual information from our dedicated server or registration fields about visitors of this site (Not that we have much information. We purge logs from time to time to keep the server running fast.) Last week's favorable court ruling is yet one more among many that give robust protection of a poster's right to anonymity when they participate in forums.

Having said the above, please see our posting guidelines, located at the bottom of all of our web pages. Our open forum discussions  are not meant as Hollywood-style gossip centered around franchise celebrities. Besides Blue MauMau's investigative news, our readers greatly value forum discussions and comment threads under the blogs and news stories because such posts provide relevent investment information and insights on franchise systems from operators and insiders.