In a bizarre case that could have wide-ranging ripple effects on the largely unregulated world of blogging on the internet, the formerly anonymous blogger who was outed by Google on orders from a judge in a defamation suit filed plans to sue Google for $15 million.
Rosemary Port, a 29-year-old student at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, found herself the target of a precedent-setting defamation case after she blasted former model Liskula Cohen in an anonymous blog called "Skanks in NYC" that referred to 37-year-old Cohen as a "skank," "whore," "hag" and other derogatory terms.
Cohen's lawyers have argued that Cohen's career has been damaged by the blogger, who once wrote "She's a psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank ... Desperation seeps from her soul, if she even has one."
Last week, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Madden agreed with Cohen's lawyers, rejecting arguments from the blogger's attorney that the comments were hyperbolic. The judge forced Google to release her identity.
This week, Port told the New York Daily News that Google threw her under the bus.
"When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected," Port said. "But that right fell through the cracks. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."
However, some commentators believe Port's case is flimsy at best.
Blogger Zennie62, whose commentary appears regularly on the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle, writes that Port's blogs violated a little-known law passed in 2006 called the "Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act" meant to protect women against cyber-stalking.
"Given what she was doing against Ms. Cohen, Rosemary Port is in clear violation of this law and could see jail time if Ms. Cohen or the Department of Justice, or for that matter Google, pressed the issue," he wrote. "I really think Ms. Port's lawyer is giving her some terrible counsel."
