Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2010

Keywords

harrassers, Skanks

Abstract

In the recent "Skanks in NYC" case, the plaintiff dropped her defamation lawsuit once the court had unmasked the John Doe defendant. Although the plaintiff was criticized for her seemingly pretextual use of a lawsuit, the outcome was substantively just. The harasser got almost exactly what she deserved for trying to humiliate her victim: embarrassment of her own.

This brief essay discusses a counterintuitive proposal inspired by the Skanks in NYC case: that the law unmask anonymous online harassers as a substitute for litigation, rather than as an aid to it. Identifying harassers can be an effective way of holding them accountable, while causing less of a chilling effect on socially valuable speech than liability would. While the proposal itself is probably unworkable, decoupling anonymity from liability enables us to understand more clearly what’s at stake with each.

Publication Citation

87 Denver University Law Review Online 23 (2010).

Disciplines

Law

Included in

Law Commons

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