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posted by takyon on Tuesday June 23 2015, @10:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the nonymous-coward dept.

The person who commented online on a local newspaper's site that a political candidate was a child sexual predator cannot remain anonymous, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The attorney for the anonymous commenter on a Freeport (Ill.) Journal Standard article said he was mulling an appeal to the US Supreme Court. But it would be a tough sell. Most of the nation's state courts have ruled that when it comes to defamation, online anonymity is out the door. (Comcast had refused to release the IP address account information, demanding a court order. Litigation ensued.)

The anonymous defendant claimed that there were insufficient facts to support a claim of defamation to begin with, so the identity shouldn't be unmasked over the 2011 comment. When trying to unmask an anonymous online commenter for defamation, there must be enough evidence to justify that whatever was said online was defamatory, the court said.

The flap concerned a candidate named Bill Hadley who was running for a seat on the Stephenson County board. The online comment, from somebody going by the online handle "Fuboy," likened the candidate to Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State football coach who was convicted of a series of child molestation charges in 2012. Fuboy also said that the candidate lived across the street from an elementary school named Empire.

Here's the comment at issue: "Hadley is a Sandusky waiting to be exposed. Check out the view he has of Empire from his front door."

Doesn't the plaintiff have to demonstrate harm?


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  • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday June 23 2015, @01:20PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @01:20PM (#199862) Journal

    > The R's have fielded too many candidates for any one of them to gain enough attention.

    They seem to do this every time. Look at the endless parade of clowns, crooks and bigots they lined up for the last election. Is that really the best that one of the biggest political parties in a country of 300+ million people can offer?

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:02PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:02PM (#199907)

    There's actually a very logical reason for the huge number of Republican candidates.

    It starts from the observation that of the 12 declared candidates, only 4 (Cruz, Graham, Paul, and Rubio) are currently holding down any kind of job. For the rest, campaigning for president while spouting the platitudes that their billionaire patrons want them to spout is effectively their means of employment. They know how to kow-tow to donors, and they know how to campaign, and they can make a very good living for the next couple of years doing so. It also makes political has-beens like Rick Santorum into public figures again like they've always wanted.

    As to why the billionaire patrons of Republican candidates allow their money to be wasted like this, the answers are:
    1. I think is that a lot of them always wanted a pet president. That means that not only would they be filthy rich, they'd have access to an army if they needed one.
    2. There's nothing else for them to do with all that money except philanthropy, and the billionaires that back Republican presidential candidates are not the sort that want to give away their money without getting something in return.
    3. It's a fun contest between them and their fellow billionaire patrons to see whose horse wins. It's that or the annual shuffling around on the Forbes 500 list that present the only real challenges these guys ever have to face.
    4. It ensures that whoever wins will do the bidding of those billionaires.
    5. A dozen candidates spouting essentially the same viewpoints makes those viewpoints more pervasive in wider society. If those ideas just happen to benefit the billionaire patrons, it means that their favored policies are more likely to be implemented at the state and local level. In this role, the presidential candidates are no different than, say, Megyn Kelly.

    And no, the situation does not appear to be similar in the Democratic primary. Whatever you may think of Bernie Sanders' positions, he at least seems to believe what he says.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.