Internet Harassment: Do I have a case?

[squashsalad]

I keep a blog on a major journaling site where I discuss parts of my life online and off. I keep all entries to this journal "friend locked" so only certain users can see the entries.

A few weeks ago someone started posting a story about a housemate with some traits that resembled me. The details were a little mixed up but some of the major issues seemed to focus on things I've said on my blog. Some of the information really hit close to home but he never named names.

Then some people dug around on the internet and found old photos of me, an old website, essay I wrote and information about me in high school. This was all posted to a different site but linked to the original housemate story.

I am very upset because someone started semi-lies about me and now people have linked me to this story. I began documenting all of this and captured the IP address of the poster. He was using an anonymizer but if we had a court order I think we could get the originating IP.

Do I have a case against either of these people?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

You haven't provided any information that leads me to believe you have a "case" against "these people." To begin, what is your case? That there are some slight liberties with the truth? Is there a clear lie that is damaging to you? How much damage did it cause you? Is it worth the effort? We don't even know who "these people" are. Just because you have IP addresses doesn't mean the operator of the site has to hand information over to you or that his information is going to be of any use - assuming he has the IP addresses still stored in his user log. What if his user log shows a Yahoo account? Then you'll have to serve Yahoo and hope that they can help provide you more evidence to try to trace the IP address of a user who accesses that email box if they didn't provide all their real information? There are many cases of defamation like you report but, unfortunately, unless you have a solid case with real damages it's just not worth the effort.