Suit against blogger a legal test in Paris, Texas

As reported by Chron.com - Houston Chronicle, clearly the concept of Innocent Until Proven Guilty is increasingly endangered as a species. What's the connection? Simple. There is ZERO need to violate an *alleged* offender's privacy. If guilt can be PROVEN, then and only then can a violation of privacy be entertained. Far too often, an allegation is equivalent to GUILT in the public perception courtroom.

Rather than ISP's handing over "questionable" bloggers, the correct direction for America should be to protect ALL *accused* and *indicted* individuals. Consider the case of the Duke college lacrosse team kids WRONGLY accused of rape for so long. We certainly need to protect *alleged* victims, but increasingly, a Wrongly Accused individual is at very high risk to themselves be a victim of public infamy; whether justified or empirically disproven. The explicit connection to OIM? If you happen to find yourself in any kind of controversy like this, the online world immortalizes such allegation like never before; constituting an unjust and defamatory blot on YOUR online identity. Why should I care if I have nothing to worry about myself? I must care PRECISELY because I have nothing to worry about, myself. It is the everyday do-gooder like you and me who are the most likely to wind up in such an unsavory situation. Just go ahead and cross the wrong politico or wrong former employer or wrong journalist ... and you'll be shocked at how quickly some version of this risk could quickly apply to you.

[T]he question is not whether a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit should be able to get the name of an anonymous blogger, but "what hoops they have to jump through" before violating the blogger's free speech rights.

The number of corporate and political lawsuits around the country against "John Doe" bloggers has been growing dramatically since 2000, said University of Florida law professor Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, an expert on these types of lawsuits.

Lidsky, a Texas native and graduate of the University of Texas law school, said most Internet libel lawsuits are brought to "chill the speech of bloggers," though some involve genuine defamation.

"It is evolving. You're seeing courts struggling to accommodate different interests," Lidsky said. "On the one hand, you do have a right to speak anonymously. On the other hand, you do not have the right to defame people."

As mentioned above, a FALSE ACCUSATION in itself is clearly a powerful form of defamation and one that LASTS FOREVER as part of the defamed victim's Online Identity Management so we must be very, very careful about the direction these cases lean when setting early precedents.