HispanicBusiness

In a precedent-setting case that many anonymous bloggers will no doubt find troubling -- especially the mean-spirited ones -- a judge ruled yesterday that the creator of a blog dedicated to ripping on a 37-year-old former Vogue cover model must release his or her identity.

Called "Skanks in NYC," the now-defunct blog went after former Australian model Liskula Cohen, whose career ended last year after a doorman assaulted her with a broken beer bottle, leaving her face disfigured.

Cohen's lawyers have argued that Cohen's career has been further damaged by the blogger, who once wrote "She's a psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank ... Desperation seeps from her soul, if she even has one."

On Monday, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Madden agreed with Cohen's lawyers, saying Cohen has a right to file a defamation suit against the author. She rejected arguments from the blogger's attorney that the comments were hyperbolic and expressed opinions, not fact.

"The thrust of the blog is that petitioner is a sexually promiscuous woman," she wrote.

When Cohen's attorneys filed the claim in January, they asked for Google to release the name of the blogger. Madden ordered Google to notify the blogger that he or she had the right to hire an attorney.

On Monday, Cohen's attorney, Steve Wagner, issued a warning to anonymous bloggers: "The rules for defamation on the Web -- for actual reality as well as virtual reality -- are the same," Wagner said, according to the NY Post. "The Internet is not a free-for-all."

The blogger's lawyer said this case could open the floodgates for lawsuits, noting that the Web is a hotbed of anonymously hurled nasty insults.