Getting a court order for anonymous author

[peace2244]

Hello

Someone posted some mean, nasty lies about my husband on a web forum...TOPIX I believe. They are not true. How hard is it to get an attorney to get a court order to make TOPIX release the author? I dont wanna pay an attorney to find out it is 1 in a million chance.

And should we get the Authors info from TOPIX, does that mean we still need to get another court order to get the IP provider to give us the info for the IP owner?

Thanks

 

[Proserpina]

TOPIX will be reluctant to release the name or IP address of the poster without a subpoena.

Depending on the nature of the lies, there may be a case for defamation, however these suits are terrifically costly (in terms of both money and time), and generally not worth pursuing unless there are actual damages.

Has your husband asked TOPIX to simply remove the posts?

Are the posts based upon opinion, or do they contain actual statements of fact?
__________________

 

[mightymoose]

You are extremely unlikely to find out WHO wrote the comment. You could go through all kinds of trouble only to find out that the comment was made by an anonymous person on a public terminal with multiple users.
Your best bet is to do as said above and try to get the website to remove the offending comments.

 

[peace2244]

What about the IP owner. For example if the person did it from a private home, and used say a gmail account , would we not have to get a court order to:

1. TOPIX (the forum/blog) to get the emai used
and
2. Google Gmail to get the IP
and
3. The IP provider

Is it possible to only say get #1, but not 2 or 3?

 

[mightymoose]

You have just about zero chance of getting a court order to get the info you want.
What you describe is an inconvenience to you, not a criminal act. You won't get a warrant.
Again, even if you could obtain an email address or an an ip address, you will still be far from having a name.