For almost twelve years, a New Jersey appellate court’s opinion was the go-to guide for the nation on whether to enforce subpoenas for the identities of online anonymous speakers, according to Jeff Kosseff on Covington’s Inside Tech Media blog.
But last year, courts “moved away from the New Jersey court’s test”—leading to diverging opinions on whether “a request for an anonymous Internet user’s identity violates the First Amendment or discovery rules,” says Kosseff. The test set out in 2001 in the case of Dendrite International v. Doe No. 3 contained four-parts: it required the anonymous speaker be notified and provided with an opportunity to respond, the speech had to be specifically identified, there had to be a direct cause of action, and sufficient evidence to support the claim was necessary.
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