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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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From the Editor It started in June 2005. Someone posted an anonymous message on a raunchy subsite of AutoAdmit, a discussion website used by law students. The subject line read, Stupid Bitch to Attend Yale Law School." He gave her full name and added, If you're going to Yale this fall, watch out for her. I was in a class with her and she [has large breasts]." That was a high point of civility. One anonymous poster after another had something to add -- bathroom-wall stuff, much of it vicious. I'll force myself on her," wrote one. They said she had herpes and called her a dirty whore. She replied and asked them to stop. They didn't. She asked AutoAdmit to take down the posts. It wouldn't. This March she and another Yale law student went public about their Internet mobbing; one of them told the Washington Post she thought she'd been turned down for summer jobs because Googling her name turned up AutoAdmit. The posts about both women only got worse. It's all up on the web still, pages of it, each labeled AutoAdmit: The most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world." In June, the two women sued a former manager of AutoAdmit and 28 pseudonymous posters. They're asking for punitive damages of $245,000 and permanent removal of the posts from AutoAdmit and Google. Many legal experts say the women are unlikely to win against the AutoAdmit manager, because of the nature of Internet law. If the Yale Alumni Magazine, or any print medium, published material like these posts, we'd be liable to hell and back. But the Internet, with its infinite capacity, is impossible to police. Therefore, U.S. law doesn't hold website hosts accountable for posts from outsiders, explains Laura Handman '73, who successfully defended Ana Marie Cox in a libel case over a site Wonkette had linked to. (Handman, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, is media law adviser to this magazine.) The Internet is meant to be a very wide-open public forum," Handman says. The law recognizes the value of this free exchange by giving website owners immunity; otherwise, they couldn't accept posts or links at all. But the anonymous posters have no immunity. Moreover, the legal proceedings could well require AutoAdmit to disclose their identities. If so, Google searches on the posters' names will forever dredge up their authorship of unethical, possibly libelous material -- a case of courtroom poetic justice, and especially damaging for people who want to be lawyers one day. Google's all-seeing eye is the reason these posts, which in years past would have stayed in the men's-room stall, became as public as primetime TV. Website owners can easily hide their content from Google searches by following instructions on Google's site. Would Google itself hide a libelous site, at the request of a victim? A spokeswoman replies, We'll remove content from Google with an order from the court, or if the site or comments are removed from the web." Indeed, it's hard to imagine how Google could arbitrate victims' requests itself. One person's libel can be another person's whistleblowing. Internet search engines are the greatest research innovation since the public library. But as more people live their conversational lives online, cases like this one will proliferate, and there's no solution in sight. The only good to come out of the AutoAdmit mess might be a little more thought on the part of people who love to hit Submit." |
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