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Women File Suit to Defend Online Reputation
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Two Yale Law School students have filed a defamation lawsuit prompted by a series of anonymous online postings about them on a popular law school discussion board called AutoAdmit.
The two female plaintiffs say the offensive comments and threats, which come up in Google searches, damaged their reputations. One of the plaintiffs alleges that the comments may have cost her a summer job at a law firm.
The suit accuses the AutoAdmit moderator at the time, Anthony Ciolli, of defamation; it seeks more than $200,000 in punitive damages and demands that the online attacks be removed from the site.
But under U.S. Internet law, people generally cannot be held liable for something someone else writes on their Web site. The posters themselves could be held liable, provided authorities are able to identify them.
AutoAdmit founder Jarret Cohen says he deplores the attacks on the women but insists that deleting posts is a slippery slope that could lead to broad censorship.
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