A student of the University of Delaware is filing a lawsuit against people who posted vulgar information about her on a gossip website called juicycampus.com. The identity of the plaintiff is being kept secret to protect her against further humiliation and her name has been stated as Jane Doe in the lawsuit. The identities of her detractors are yet to be ascertained. The plaintiff alleges that these people identified her by name and posted vulgar and false claims about her sexual history on the website. Apart from claiming damages for psychological impairment, emotional distress, loss of reputation and distraction from her school work, she is also asking for a public apology and for the comments to be removed from the site.
The anonymous posters did not stop at name calling and stated allegations about the plaintiff as fact. At least one of them (assuming they were different people) posted that Doe slept with three men on one night.
Such allegations are commonplace on the website which encourages students to post salacious gossip about their classmates anonymously.
The two year old site claims to provide absolute anonymity to people who visit it. They do not have a registration procedure and they don't ask for any information.
Jane Doe's lawsuit does not name the website as a defendant and many feel that they are equally responsible for Doe's defamation as they failed to enforce the terms of use of the consumer- fraud laws that require users to agree not to post abusive, obscene or defamatory content.
This legal battle is going to be hard fought and expensive since Doe needs to fight several legal battles before she can get the names of her detractors. Her first battle will be with the website to identify the name of their internet service provider. Next she will have to fight with the service provider to get the name of the account holder.
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