A former shipping company executive, J. Erik Hvide, claimed he was libelled on financial message boards hosted by Yahoo! and AOL. The companies themselves were not sued. The reason is that earlier court rulings in the US protect ISPs from responsibility for messages posted on their sites. Instead, Hvide sued anonymous individuals who claimed he had been guilty of mismanagement and criminal behaviour. The court papers referred only to “John Doe”.
At the time of the district court’s ruling on this case, AOL and Yahoo! were ordered to identify the eight responsible individuals. It appears that this order was appealed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which sought to protect the identities of those involved.
The ACLU argued that the court should first rule on whether Hvide have been defamed before naming those who made the comments. However, the court disagreed, apparently without explaining its reasoning. The ACLU is said to be considering whether to appeal.