23. August 2009 10:57
A recent court case involving Google is making legal history.
It was decided in court that Google has to reveal the identity of a blogger who called a model "s skank". The blog - 'Skanks in NYC' - and which was hosted by Blogger.com, owned by Google, made a number of personal comments about a model, promptly triggering legal action.
For us, the most interesting aspect of this case is, that the court ruled that bloggers could not be anonymous. This can be seen a result of the maturity of the Internet has reached and that users of the Net can no longer hide behind an online pseudonym.
Lawyers for the blogger had argued that the comments were "non-actionable opinion and/or hyperbole", which didn’t fly. The media stated that the ruling "could have huge ramifications for bloggers around the world."
Hackers might be effected by the ruling as well – opening the door to civil legal cases against anonymous cybercriminals. In principle, if a hacker generates a malware attack on your PC, you would be within your rights to start a lawsuit against him.
Since the 'Skank' case has set a precedent for Internet operators to hand over details of their service users if a court instructs them to do so, you will be able to get the identity of your unknown hacker and start legal actions.
We see this as positive for the Internet generally, and hopefully hackers will now think twice conducting their evil deeds, as they can no longer be as anonymous and free from detection as they think they are.
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