Video Professor sues anonymous griping posters, demands their identities

by Greg Beck

Video Professor, a company that uses infomercials to sell computer-training lessons, sued 100 anonymous "John Doe" posters who expressed their opinions about the company on various online forums, including infomercialratings.com. The company's lawsuit claims that the griping posters violated federal trademark laws by saying negative things about the company, and committed defamation and several violations of state law. After filing suit, the company sent subpoenas to the operator of the websites, demanding the release of the posters' identifying information and the IP addresses from which they made the posts. Here's the complaint and the company's motion to subpoena the anonymous posters' identity.  The challenged posts are here and here. 

The Internet has become the preeminent forum for consumers to share information about products and services online. Courts have recognized that the First Amendment protects the right to post criticism anonymously, noting the risk that critical opinions would be chilled if the identity of anonymous critics could too easily be revealed. Indeed, Video Professor's own website advises consumers to search for customer reviews online:

[I]f you decide to use a lesser-known merchant, there are a few things you can do to check out the seller and make sure he’s legit. For one, you can visit the Federal Trade Commission’s Web site for links to consumer protection resources, including lists of complaints lodged against businesses. You also have the option of searching the business section of a major search engine, where you can view company profiles and customer reviews of that company’s products and services. Last but not least, you can request that a seller send you a catalog or other information about his or her company.

My colleague Paul Levy sent a letter to Video Professor today objecting to the subpoena.

Comments

[download free movies]

Is it so? It is great information for us..How do they locate the IP address..??

[paid surveys]

By locating an IP address, the person who uses the internet for harming a company, can now be busted.

[operatore video]

It’s more awesome information to us. I have found it so true and helpful, Very very great!!!
Thanks a lot for share this...

[Lead Generation]

It's really a violation. People thought that they will save more for doing this. But it turns out to be more critical and they've be sued for this. People should learn.

[Club Penguin Cheats]

This issue is important to consumers! This is a draconian attack on the very foundation of the First Amendment Speech.An entity or a person with 'deep' pockets believes he can suppress Free Speech through financial intimidation is no different than a foreign junta or a dictatorial regime arresting their opponents for their expression of free speech through military or police action.

[Video Professor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVSUtX79Og0
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/14/going-viral-the-video-pro_n_112513.html

[InformercialScams.com User]

Whenever I see an infomercial with which I am not familiar, my first impulse is to check it out on informercialscams.com (hence my posting this at 5:30 in the morning :). It certainly is a valuable resource, and needs to be heartily defended. And, of course, the _principle_ of anonymity on the net requires vigilant defense as well.

I'm a little curious, though, as to why infomercialscams.com should hold on to information that would allow anonymity to be breached. Hindsight may be 20-20, but if I were setting up such a site, I would implement a posting protocol that cached personally identifiable info only long enough to ensure that my service wasn't being abused. This would mean hanging on to a poster's IP address etc. for maybe a day or two at most, long enough for spammers to be identified and blacklisted.

[Lou Cross]

Hey, check out www.vplitigation.com ! Someone is going back after these guys. You go girl or guy!

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[Dan Wilson]

This issue is important to consumers! This is a draconian attack on the very foundation of the First Amendment Speech.An entity or a person with 'deep' pockets believes he can suppress Free Speech through financial intimidation is no different than a foreign junta or a dictatorial regime arresting their opponents for their expression of free speech through military or police action.

Can you imagine where this would lead? Let's warp this ahead in time and say that Video Professor is successful in his suit against the defendants in this case. According to an article in the Denver Post, he promises to take this all the way up to the Supreme Court. Would this not have a chilling effect on every negative review of a product, movie, politician, corporate business practice, restaurant, movie etc.? Could not this open the legal floodgates for anyone who has received a negative review claiming the same cause for libel and defamation? I would lead you to another similar celebrated cases being fought against a book review at various places on the web.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,1546,PZ-Myers-sued-for-a-negative-review-in-a-blog-post,Boing-Boing or

Here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/20/writer-sued-for-a-ne.html.

Here:

http://www.angiegotsued.com/

Would this not suppress every critic out there or limit their comments in a fog of possible litigation?

The bottom line is this. Can a person or a corporate entity who has unlimited financial and legal resources be able to use the judicial system to suppress the Free Speech of outspoken critics who he KNOWS does not have access to those same resources? Litigation in the court system is expensive.

A lawyer can bury the other side in paperwork with legal tactics and strategies using depositions, interrogatories, subpoenas, delays, appeals etc. There is no way that the average consumer has the economic resources to legally fight such a strategy and they knows this. So in effect, they are able silence their critics by De Facto litigation. However, the chilling aftermath of all this is a suppression of the basic First Amendment Rights and Consumer Advocacy.

In the W. R.Grace & Co in the Woburn case and in Libby, Montana, http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/grace03.shtml. Didn't Jan Schlichtmann's Law Firm end up in bankruptcy?

These cases do not merit the free speech dicussion above but only shows how corporations and individuals can use the legal system to advance or protect their business practices
from consumers.

[Anonymous Cow-herd]

It's off topic but... Jones gave people grape Flavor Aid, *not* Kool-Aid. Now I have to sue you for beverage defamation... :-)

[Roger Strong]

Great moments in internet history: Video Professor suddenly realizes that online customer reviews do for thier product what the Jonestown massacre did for Kool-Aid.

[Ron K]

I would be happy to provide my full name, address, and phone to Videoprofessor so they can serve me with a subpeona because I just sent truthful facts to informercialratings.com. I did not express my opinion, only the facts. Futher, I read some of the comments by others and I they were far more explicit and open than the videoprofessor commercials. I certainly that hope that video professor does pursue civil litigation and those named as defendants file a countersuit and produce their own infomercials to educate others and attract other plaintiffs in a class action suit.