Quote:
Originally posted by cheekycherry
Some fuck whit is speaking liabolous stuff against me in my forums and some other forums within my industry...
I want to take them to court...
How do I find out the name and address of an AOL email accounts customer? As this is the only info I have of this guy and I doubt he will post it, should I call AOL?
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This has been done before. What you need to do is file the lawsuit and name the defendants initially as "John Doe". Once your suit is officially filed, your lawyer can subpoena AOL to release the identities of the posters. Your lawyer will then amend the complaints with the proper names of the defendants. He will then proceed to discovery--server logs, posting histories, etc. There shouldn't be 4th Amendment or privacy issues here because 1) AOL is a private entity and 4th amendment normally only covers government actors 2) any reasonable expectation of privacy has been waived by the poster by posting the statements in a public forum.
If the guy posted crap to have webmasters that are already working for your program quit, you may be able to hit him/her with a "Tortious Interference with Contract" lawsuit. This is a heavy duty lawsuit because you can ask for PUNITIVE DAMAGES--heavy money awards designed to punish conduct.
To prove libel the statement has to 1) be false 2) be made with "malice." #1 is easy but #2 is harder to prove. Then again it can be implied by what, how, and what the intended effect of the writing was.
Good luck and keep us posted.