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Anonymous Blog Comments and Comment Spam: Open Thread on Best Practices

By Eric Lipman

The New York Times ran an interesting article Monday about how certain news Web sites and blogs have begun moving away from the once-standard practice of allowing anonymous posting of comments on articles. In the story, the Times mentions the recent hubbub surrounding Cleveland judge Shirley Strickland Saffold, whose e-mail address was used to register a commenter named "Lawmiss" on the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Web site. Lawmiss proceeded to make some inflammatory (and likely unethical, if, in fact, Lawmiss is found to be Judge Saffold herself) comments on articles about cases before her. The Plain Dealer outed Saffold -- on the front page -- after the editors were spurred to look further into the identity of the commenter because the commenter had said some not-so-nice things about a reporter's relative. Now Saffold and her daughter, who has stepped up to the plate to claim responsibility for the comments, are suing the paper (PDF) for $50 million for, inter alia, violating the site's privacy policy. And the judge has also subpoenaed the paper's editor and the reporter who wrote the article to testify at a hearing about whether the judge now needs to recuse herself. Defense lawyers aren't waiting around for...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on April 14, 2010 (boomark / email).