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salon.com > Technology May 24, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/05/24/raytheon Raytheon triumphs over Yahoo posters' anonymity Company drops its lawsuit -- once it gets the names it seeks. - - - - - - - - - - - - Raytheon on Thursday dropped its lawsuit against the 21 "John Does" it had accused of revealing company secrets on a Yahoo message board. The defense contractor had filed the suit in March, seeking $25,000 in damages, stemming from anonymous postings about Raytheon financial results and contracts that the company claimed had hurt its reputation. Once the suit was filed, Raytheon requested and received a court order to subpoena Yahoo and several Internet service providers for information that could identify the 21 unnamed defendants. Yahoo and the other companies complied -- and though it took some time, Raytheon has now traced the identities of all 21 who posted the alleged company secrets. "Four employees have voluntarily left the company ... and we've counseled many of the individuals involved about not sharing private company information," says Raytheon spokesman David Polk. With its problem solved, Raytheon filed papers to dismiss the suit. "Our internal investigation has come to a conclusion, so it's time to bring this to a close," says Polk. But what about those people whose identities were revealed in the process? Although, no court has reached any decision, their names were turned over to Raytheon -- causing some to leave their jobs. Cyberlaw experts like the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Shari Steele and the Electronic Privacy Information Center's David Sobel say that a poster's legal right to identity protection is ill-defined, at best. Many companies have filed similar lawsuits against "John Does" who have allegedly misbehaved online, only to withdraw them, as Raytheon now has, once the court has issued a subpoena and an ISP has revealed an anonymous poster's identity. In fact, it's a relatively easy legal maneuver. Raytheon maintains that "this has never been about chilling anyone's right
to privacy and free speech," says Polk. "But there's a very clear line
between speaking about the events of the day and revealing private company
information." The line is not nearly so clear about protecting online
anonymity.
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