"John Doe" and "Jane Doe" are multiple-use names that are used when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often used to refer to a corpse whose identity is unknown or unconfirmed. Secondly, such names are also often used to refer to a hypothetical "everyman" in other contexts, in a manner similar to "John Q. Public" or "Joe Public". There are many variants to the above names, including "John Roe", "Richard Roe", "Jane Roe" and "Baby Doe", "Janie Doe" or "Johnny Doe".
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States established the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals. The Court held that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault, states are free to establish their own standards of liability for defamatory statements made about private individuals. However, the Court also ruled that if the state standard is lower than actual malice, the standard applying to public figures, then only actual damages may be awarded.
Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal.4th 33 (2006), was a California Supreme Court case concerning online defamation. The case resolved a defamation claim brought by Stephen Barrett, Terry Polevoy, and attorney Christopher Grell against Ilena Rosenthal and several others. Barrett and others alleged that the defendants had republished libelous information about them on the internet. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Rosenthal was a "user of interactive computer services" and therefore immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The Supreme Court of Delaware is the sole appellate court in the United States' state of Delaware. Because Delaware is a popular haven for corporations, the Court has developed a worldwide reputation as a respected source of corporate law decisions, particularly in the area of mergers and acquisitions.
An anonymous post is an entry on a bulletin board system, Internet forum, or other discussion forums, without a screen name or more commonly by using a non-identifiable pseudonym. Some online forums such as Slashdot and Techdirt do not allow such posts, requiring users to be registered either under their real name or utilizing a pseudonym. Others like JuicyCampus, AutoAdmit, 2channel, and other Futaba-based imageboards thrive on anonymity. Users of 4chan, in particular, interact in an anonymous and ephemeral environment that facilitates rapid generation of new trends.
A person who is found to have published a defamatory statement may evoke a defence of innocent dissemination, which absolves him/her of liability provided that he/she had no knowledge of the defamatory nature of the statement, and that his/her failure to detect the defamatory content was not due to negligence. The defence, sometimes also known as "mechanical distributor", is of concern to Internet Service Providers because of their potential liability for defamatory material posted by their subscribers.
AutoAdmit, also known as Xoxohth, is a website for prospective and current law students and lawyers. Its largely unmoderated law school message board is now the only active section, though it previously featured pages for undergraduates, business students, and graduate school, and recently introduced a crypto currency discussion page, small penis humiliation discussion page, and discussion page for radical Islamic verses of the Koran. The message board, which bills itself as "the most prestigious law school discussion board in the world", has drawn the attention and criticism of some in the legal community and the media for its lack of moderation of offensive and defamatory content.
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbid libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be patently false. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.
Canadian defamation law refers to defamation law as it stands in both common law and civil law jurisdictions in Canada. As with most Commonwealth jurisdictions, Canada follows English law on defamation issues.
A Doe subpoena is a subpoena that seeks the identity of an unknown defendant to a lawsuit. Most jurisdictions permit a plaintiff who does not yet know a defendant's identity to file suit against John Doe and then use the tools of the discovery process to seek the defendant's true name. A Doe subpoena is often served on an online service provider or ISP for the purpose of identifying the author of an anonymous post.
Doe v. 2themart.com Inc., 140 F. Supp. 2d 1088 (2001), was a federal case decided by United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, on the issue of an individual's First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet and a private party's right to disclose the identity of the anonymous Internet user by enforcing a civil subpoena. The court held that 2TheMart.com (TMRT) failed to show that the identities of these anonymous Internet users were directly and materially relevant to the core defense in the litigation, and thus the subpoena should not be issued. Therefore, Doe's motion to quash the subpoena was granted.
Mobilisa v. Doe was a lawsuit filed in 2005 by Mobilisa Inc., a Washington-based company that provides wireless and mobile communications to government and military clients. The case against John Doe, the anonymous sender of an email using the service "The Suggestion Box". The case is notable regarding the legal question of what standard should govern requests for discovery of the identity of an anonymous Internet speaker whose speech allegedly violated a plaintiff's rights. While the court originally issued a subpoena requiring The Suggestion Box to disclose the identity of the e-mail's sender, it later vacated this order when The Suggestion Box objected in December 2005.
Dendrite International, Inc. v. Doe No. 3, 342 N.J. Super. 134, 775 A.2d 756, is a New Jersey Superior Court case in which Dendrite International, Inc., a purveyor of computer software used in the pharmaceutical industry, brought a John Doe lawsuit against individuals who had anonymously posted criticisms of the company on a Yahoo message board. When Presiding Chancery Judge Kenneth MacKenzie rejected one of Dendrite's requests to compel Yahoo to reveal the identity of an anonymous defendant, Dendrite appealed. The appellate court upheld the district court's decision, and in doing so, created a set of guidelines for determining the circumstances under which an anonymous online speaker may be unmasked. This standard has since been applied to other cases, such as Mobilisa, Inc. v. Doe, Gallucci v. New Jersey On-Line LLC, Independent Newspapers v. Brodie, and The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc.
McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that an Ohio statute that prohibits anonymous political or campaign literature is unconstitutional. Writing for the Court, Justice Stevens asserted that such action is protected by the First Amendment, and therefore violated the constitutional principle of freedom of speech. Justice Scalia dissented, in an opinion which Chief Justice Rehnquist joined. Justice Ginsburg wrote a concurrence, while Justice Thomas wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment.
Pacific Century International, Ltd. v. Does 1-101, No. 4:11-cv-02533, is a court case where Pacific Century International requested to subpoena the names and identities of 101 BitTorrent users whose IP Addresses were tied to downloading one of their copyrighted works. The resulting court decision permitted Pacific Century International to subpoena the identity of Doe 1, but dismissed claims against Does 2-101 for failure to demonstrate that the Does had operated as a single group while distributing the torrent, preventing each users' subpoena request from being enjoined into a single court filing. This case set a precedent for disallowing filings against large groups of IP addresses used to distribute copyrighted works over peer-to-peer networks.
Anonymous Online Speakers v. United States District Court for the District of Nevada, 611 F.3d 653 (2010), is a decision by the Ninth Circuit lowering the standard a plaintiff must meet to compel identification of anonymous posters on the Internet.
Krinsky v. Doe 6, was a decision by the California Court of Appeal, Sixth District, addressing the evidentiary standard required of plaintiffs seeking the identification of anonymous Internet posters. The case addressed defamation and the right to anonymous speech on the Internet. Plaintiff Lisa Krinsky sued Doe 6, an anonymous poster to Yahoo! message boards, for defamation. Krinsky served a subpoena to Yahoo! for Doe 6's identity. Doe 6 filed a motion to quash the subpoena, "contending that he had a First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet."
Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concerning online defamation. Plaintiffs Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick sued Crystal Cox for maintaining several blogs that accused Obsidian and Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. The court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, but found one single post to be more factual in its assertions and therefore defamatory. For that post, the court awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. This case is notable for the court's ruling that Cox, as an internet blogger, was not a journalist and was thus not protected by Oregon's media shield laws, although the court later clarified that its ruling did not categorically exclude blogs from being considered media and indicated that its decision was based in part upon Cox offering to remove negative posts for a $2,500 fee. In January 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court's judgment awarding compensatory damages to the bankruptcy trustee. It also ordered a new trial on the blog post at issue.
Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1–1,495, Civil Action No. 11-1741 (JDB/JMF), was a United States District Court for the District of Columbia case in which the court held that anonymous users of the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent could not remain anonymous after charges of copyright infringement were brought against them. The court ultimately dismissed the case, but the identities of defendants were publicly exposed.
Doe ex. rel. Tarlow v. District of Columbia, 489 F.3d 376, is a unanimous decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, written by Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, in which the Court upheld a 2003 District of Columbia statute that stated the conditions for authorizing a non-emergency surgical procedure on a mentally incompetent person. This case developed out of an appeal to a district court decision that was brought on behalf of a mentally incompetent patient who was subjected to an abortion without her consent and another patient who was subjected to an eye surgery without the patient's consent. Under the Appellate Court's interpretation of the statute, a court located in the District of Columbia, must apply the "best interest of the patient" standard to a person who was never competent, and the court must apply the "known wishes of the patient" standard to a person who was once competent. The appellate decision was remanded back to the District Court.
