http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Court-tells-Yelp-it-must-reveal-some-critics-5132790.php

A recent court case is requiring Yelp to turn over the information it knows about people who made statements on its website about a certain service provider. The service provider is suing to protect its business reputation (which it has legal right to do) against libel (and more likely trade libel) (i.e. people telling lies or un-truths about you in writing).

Does this concern anyone about posting on RFM? The church wants to sue someone for posting something on RFM (perhaps for posting a copy of a letter or some other "rumor" bout T. Monson), so they ask a Court to force RFM to reveal an IP address?

Interesting . . . .

good question. I'd think not since we have freedom of speech, and the church is not officially a business

Points against neo's view:

We live in a capitalistic society where corporations rule.

TSCC is a Corporation.

Whistle-blowers are NOT heros (Snowden)


In the world as I describe TRUTH is the enemy.

Welcome to Amerika.

LDS's mother was a hamster and its father smelt if elderberries.

Were they to go after people like this they risk almost certain embarrassment.

I had to go to a deposition for something I posted here. It can happen. Gotta be careful. Was not related to church per se, but something I said about a member in the local news.

You still have a lot of protections from slander. First, the LDS church would have to show that your comments were untrue, and they have to do with based on supportable facts, not feelings or opinions. So if you say that Joseph Smith slept with a 14 year old girl, that isn't slander, because it is a reasonable assumption to make based on the evidence. Second, and this is an even bigger obstacle, they have to show damage. I can say something preposterously untrue, like, "Brigham Young supported and respected women and minorities," and even though this is a provable lie, the church still has to show damages, and prove that my misstatement caused such damages.

I am not familiar with the Yelp case, but I am assuming that in this particular case, the authors created a rumor that caused hardship and financial loss that was provable. For example, if someone started a false rumor that peanuts caused brain cancer, and the rumor destroyed the peanut industry, caused people to lose jobs, and a economic loss of millions upon millions of dollars, then yes, that person needs to be held liable, and their identity needs to be known. If however, they made the statement in good faith, they had evidence that they believed showed peanuts caused brain cancer, that was later refuted, then they have good protection under the law.