Outed 'Skanks in NYC' blogger to sue Google
Last week, a judge ordered Google to reveal the name of a blogger who may have defamed Vogue model Liskula Cohen. Now Rosemary Port, whose "Skanks in NYC" blog suggested Cohen was a "skank" and a "ho" among other potentially negative descriptions, is now turning a little of her "frank in NYC" wrath on Google.
You may be moved a little by Port's logic. Firstly, she told the New York Daily News that it was Cohen who caused all the fuss: "Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it (...) That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated."
It is an interesting argument, one that perhaps suggests a future in the law, should a fashion career not satisfy.
And it seems that Port intends to test the boundaries of the law by attempting to sue Google. The 29-year-old student at the Fashion Institute of Technology told the Daily News that she will launch a $15 million suit against the entirely non-skanky company from the Left Coast (the blog was hosted on Google's Blogger).
"When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected," she told the News.
However, once the judge made her order, things changed. "I would think that a multibillion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users," said Port. Her attorney, Salvatore Strazzullo, told the Daily News that Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity."
Strazzullo will invoke the Founding Fathers in his argument, he said. And it is an interesting argument, one that perhaps extends beyond the blogs Google hosts to every area of personal information that the company holds. What should anyone who uses Google's services reasonably expect from the company in terms of privacy?
It will be more than a little pulsating to see where the courts might bang their gavels on this issue. But perhaps the saddest part of this strange episode is the reason why Port and Cohen allegedly fell out. According to the Daily News, Cohen said some not-so-nice things about Port to her ex-boyfriend. Oh, ladies. Is it really worth getting all this publicity, all this darned fame, over something that might have started as a little tittle-tattle?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
But with that kind of twisted logic, she can move to Alaska and try for Palin's old job.
Why sue google? Sue the judge who ordered google to reveal that information...
Nail. There's the head. Hit it!
(Ok bad analogy. But you get the point.)
Huh? Wha? Pulsating? Interesting word choice there.
I do find it disturbing that one can be sued for expressing one's opinion about another person. Its not like she was saying the alleged ho committed murder or is doing something harmful like she is a terrorist. And then the govt stepping in and forcing identity is crazy. You know 3/4 of the postings here could probably qualify for defamation.
?We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.
Hope her lawyer gets his fee in advance
Hope this lawyer is getting his money up front....
That is, it is their duty to tell their clients that the case has no merits.
I wish more "Courts" would remember that and take action against lawyers who don't have the guts or are too greedy to tell their clients, your case does not have merit.
Take some money away from these types of lawyers, the case load goes down, and "real" cases could be heard.
Douglas Ledet
I really don't see where this woman has a case.
The whole lawsuit seems preposterous. It makes me wonder if she is just seeking a little face-to-face time with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America.
Besides, this woman claims Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity." My question is how far does she expect Google to go in protecting her identity. In my opinion, she would have to be pretty dumb to expect them to protect her interests 100%. Google's lawyers are going to protect Google's interests not hers. She was not the person paying the Google lawyers' fees. Since she was an interested party in this suit, she should have had a lawyer along with Google's lawyers arguing the case.
If you kill yourself, you don't get the life insurance. If you purposefully smash your car, you don't get the insurance agency lawyers on your side. Why should Google pay her way and bail her out when she has purposefully broken very clear laws? And we aren't just talking legislative infringments here, we are talking civil libel which is much bigger and are in some jurisdictions crimes as defined by the Crimes Acts. This isn't ambigious in that the laws haven't caught up sort of thing. Slander and defamation via published/written material is very well documented and legislated against. There is no crying ignorance. She wasn't just 'having an opinion' - she was slandering this woman's name. Being foolish enough to publish it for revenge is not Google's fault.
The case will probably not even make it to court. Google was complying with a court order. They had no choice. The TOS clearly gave them the right to do so. She has no case.
The right to express views, opinions, have open and free discourse about ideas etc, to discuss and/or express concerns about trends and/or matters of public interest... these are all still free and fine to do anonymously. It is about raising your concern about a behaviour or an industry as a whole, rather than naming things. I know I've missed out categories here, but overall, freedom of speech and anonymity are important and required for open discourse. But there is a difference between 'opinions' and slander. Think - this may not be true so would I want someone to say this about me? It matters not if you use a generalisation... so why single out one person? This blogger could've said "I'm concerned about promiscuous behaviour in the modelling industry" rather than singling out one person and smearing her name for revenge (ergo not out of expressing a view, it was malicious intent).
If you have irrefutable proof, then sure, name them - it is not slander, libel, defamation - if it is true. So, if it is your 'opinion' rather than 'truth' then say so and don't single out a person/company (companies have the same rights in terms of defamation as people in most jurisdictions).
While this in itself might raise some concern, so does the idea of being able to publish material about another person that is not true. It is a balancing act. The rights of the person to not be defamed and the right of the voice to speak.
Google, I'm suing. More power to you Rosemary!
She'll probably go all Octomom with this and be pseudofamous for awhile.
It takes a little more effort, but it can be made exceedingly difficult to discover someones identity online. Using TOR and throw away email addresses like guerrillamail.com one can do a pretty job of making discovery of this sort a nightmare.
"Whether calling somebody a 'skank' is actionable we will find out soon, I suppose. "
It wasn't just calling her a skank. Part of the judges reasoning was the proximity on the site to a photo Ms. Cohen.
Her lawyer has indicated that Ms. Cohen intents to drop the suit.
- by moldor August 24, 2009 4:11 PM PDT
- Geez, woman - this is the Internet. You HAVE no right to privacy. get over it !
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- by screamapillar August 25, 2009 9:17 PM PDT
- I certainly hope that isn't true... the expectation of privacy for 'reasonable' (is legal) behaviour should be protected.
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