[LINK] Dentist Google review court order lead to all being revealed

[Robin Whittle]

(I am writing a Thunderbird HTML email to Link to see what happens.)

We can get at least our weekly allowance of schadenfreude from reading this:

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-24/melbourne-dentist-defamation-action-over-alleged-google-review/12483062

A dentist won a court order for Google to reveal to his legal team
username and IP address details of who wrote a damning review of his
business.  The team then used this with Optus to determine who wrote the
review. 

As far as I know defamation - at least in a fully public sense, rather
than within a closed, private group of people - is widely and correctly
not regarded as part of the freedom of speech, freedom from interception
and anonymity protections that most of us want to defend.

Based on what I read in the above story, I think the reviewer deserves
whatever negative social, legal and financial consequences arise from
his actions and the ensuing court case.

However, now that a legal precedent has apparently been set, I think
there is a very slippery slope, with no clear threshold for how
"defamatory" an anonymous review needs to be before aggressive legal
steps could be used to identify the author for all the public to see.