14 DAY TRIAL // California, the state that decided that there can be no smoking in public places (bars, pubs and clubs included), just made another decision that will be regarded by some Internet users as crazy in a very annoying way. A court has just declared that trolls are to remain anonymous, because what they write are mostly assertions and not actual facts, and are not suitable to be sued under the defamation law, and under the protection of the First Amendment.
If you've ever had an account on a forum (and you most likely did, at some point in your life), you can't not remember the personas that had thousands of posts and were simply going at the others' throats with every chance they got. Perhaps they're the reason you're not active on the respective forum anymore. That worked for me, so I'm just extrapolating my experience saying this.
Come to think about it, but when you're not in the middle of an argument via the Internet, the decision the court made is actually the only logical decision to be made. What a troll writes is somehow similar to parody, just that their claims are a lot more personal and incredibly more virulent. And parody is protected, so the super users on forums or wherever, that resort to these heinous messages, must be too.
Duncan Riley of Tech Crunch gave the example over which the ruling was made: Lisa Krinsky, COO of SFBC, a Florida-based drug service, wanted to sue 10 people within the company's ranks because they posted Yahoo! messages that the management of the company was "consisting of boobs, losers and crooks." That's not all, when addressed by her, one answered that (Warning! Strong language to follow!) "I will reciprocate felation with Lisa even though she has fat thighs, a fake medical degree, 'queefs' and has poor feminine hygiene."
Yet, she was not allowed to start legal action for defamation, just because the posts consisted of assertions instead of actual fact. Long live the troll!