[url]http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48291,00.html[/url]
WASHINGTON — Those with quick access to the Internet and the urge to rant online ought to think twice – what you post could come back to haunt you, in court.
As the number of Internet users and electronic bulletin boards soars, so has the tendency for people who use the perceived anonymity of the medium to lash out or "flame," as it is called in cyber-speak, against public and private figures, companies and institutions.
But with the increased venting comes more and more lawsuits from corporate lawyers who have discovered posters' identities and sued them, arguing that their flaming has crossed the line from free speech to defamation.
"People don’t think about it," said Lee Tien, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocate for free speech and privacy on the Internet. "They think what they say is more like a conversation and that the words are effervescent and disappear into the air, and often they are not. As a result, the things people say are likely to come back to bite them."
Since a Florida appellate court forced Internet service providers in October 2000 to divulge the identities of eight online posters who were being sued for comments they made about a former corporate CEO, many states have allowed lawyers to compel ISPs to reveal the identities of their users without evidence of wrongdoing.
Big ISPs like America Online and Yahoo! have softened the blow by giving their users advance notice that they are giving their identities away, leading to a hike in the number of lawsuits.
In December, Varian Medical Systems in California won a $775,000 jury verdict against two former workers who accused managers on at least 100 message boards of discriminating against pregnant employees and being homophobic.
Miami lawyer Bruce Fischman recently won a suit against a former employee of HealthSouth who anonymously posted hundreds of messages about a CEO’s wife having lewd sexual affairs. The defendant was forced to give money to women’s' rights groups and to teach illiterate people to read.
"I’m not a zealot, but I don’t believe that the right to speech is the right to hurt someone," Fischman said. "Companies aren’t going to take this sitting down."