August 16th, 2008Google Asked to Reveal Blogger Identity
An Indian company, tired of the unceasing attacks of an anonymous blogger, decided to file a lawsuit against him, as Blog Wired, citing a Wall Street Journal article, reports. But Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects encounters a problem. The company cannot find out the identity of the blogger who made a habit out of denigrating it.
The cyber attacks over the company may have been conducted by a former employee or someone who was not satisfied with the services of the Indian firm. Since it doesn’t want to lose time trying to discover who the man is, the company claims that Google should provide it with this information because the man is a user of Google’s blog client, Blogger. “Toxic Writer”, as the blogger identifies himself, should be protected, according to privacy policies, against the disclosure of any of his personal information given to Google the moment he subscribed.
Although Google’s policies are the same, no matter the country of its users, the company may have been forced to reconsider its guiding lines. This because in many of the countries where Google’s products are available, the line of thought doesn’t resemble Western mentality too much. In fact, Western mentalities can differ quite significantly from one country to the other.
“One of the most common places for people to sue, because they will generally win, are nations that are or have formerly been part of the British Commonwealth, where there is no First Amendment, and the law looks more toward protecting the reputation of people than protecting the free speech of speakers,” John Watson, associate professor at American University specializing in communication law told Blog Wired. As Google is U.S. based, but it has offices all over the globe, local matters that involve the company are judged under the laws of the country where the conflict appears. Hence, Google might have to reveal the information that the Indian company is asking for in order to keep all its actions legal.
Tags: Blogger, communication, company, free, free speech, Google, India, Infrastructure, lawsuit, privacy policy, speech, University
