A British corporate law firm has created a new unit that will help easily offended corporate giants track down and sue anonymous Internet forum posters. They will also target whistle-blowers. They specialize in figuring out how to get ISPs to turn over their subscribers' personal information.
A spokeswoman for Wragge said: "Courts can compel Internet Service Providers or telephone service providers to make information available regarding registered names, email addresses and other key account holder information.Birmingham Wragge team to focus on online comment defamation (via Futurismic)One growth area is identifying individuals involved in leaking confidential information, such as client or financial details, to competitor companies. With the help of employment law specialists, the team can assist both in finding the source of such leaks and advising on any subsequent employment aspects."
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may i anonymously suggest using an anonymizer for such comments.
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I love living in Britain.. I mean all our Internet activity now goes into a large database of sites we've visited thanks to Wacki Jacqui, now companies are pressurize ISPs to turn over their logs rather than having to go through a lengthy legal battle. Next will be the mandatory logging of National Insurance numbers for UK websites, just like South Korean sites.
Purposely anonymous, whilst I still can be.. :)
Of course these legal bastards would be suing BoingBoing for every IP ever logged in under pixleshifter!
Anonomize AND use an open wifi connection when whistleblowing or conducting corporate criticism.
ahem! of course one has to log out beforehand...
How about a class action suit against any customers of these assholes? Surely there is a case in suing most any large company for their internet marketing comment trolls' lies?
Either way... we most def need a wikileaks-style site for people who get shit from this company. Just post all communications there and shame the companies using their service.
Put companies on both sides out of business and laugh when the bottom-feeders working for them are on the breadline. Scum like them deserve much worse.
Good luck, I'm behind 7 proxies :p
LOL. I have an entire blog dedicated to corporate criticism. I'm not anonymous I'm right out there in the open. Everything I say I get from news sites and etc. It is all factual information. It is pathetic that this law firm would try and drum up business this way. They are desperate.
http://jasongooljar.com
I heard Wragge & Co. fornicate with animals. and eat their one children.
I suspect their main target will be wikileaks and its analogues and their main clients will be nominally-democratic states.
I foresee serious lulz at the expensive of these lawyers in the future. If they think they can pull off shit like this and get out unscathed, they are seriously mistaken. But let them be morons and piss off the wrong people to go after.
I'm obviously not the first to point this out, but such measures (like 3-strikes policies and RIAA lawsuits) will just hasten the mainstreaming of proxy server.
These people are pathetic. It's like they just assume anything they try will automatically work without a hitch, and we won't even try to fight back or take countermeasures. "And it would have worked, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids."
These people are like Homeland Security, laboriously expending hundreds of thousands of committee man-hours to grind out the definitive policy for preventing anyone from ever again using box-cutters to hijack a plane, while Al Qaeda turns on a dime to think up some NEW way of attacking them. It's like something out of "Brazil."
@ Anonymous 7 proxies.
Pretty easy actually.
100 proxies? Still possible.
You shuda used a botnet then a proxy; Now that wuda earned you bragging rights.
Best way is to use someones open (WEP) wifi and Linux.
Good luck with that, mate.
The only people they'll catch are the ones who use real names, traceable emails, and don't have access to ssh proxies or public wifi.
Again, folk, proof positive, that there's a sucker born every minute and you can always trust a lawyer to make a buck off it.
I think that the reason this was started is somewhat more perverse. A about a month ago the Guardian was hit by a super injunction for the trafigura polution case. They were unable to report on the matter and wrote this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/12/guardian-gagged-from-reporting-parliament
However this was quickly undone by twitterers. Within hours of the gag order on the newspaper users found the information and disseminated it. Once the information was common knowledge the gagging order was lifted.
see more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/13/trafigura-tweets-freedowm-of-speech
So yes I think perhaps this law firm is setting this division up in order to prevent another case of democratic action against corporate excesses.
Good story. This blog post and some other British media law stories inspired me to write this: http://jameswdcrawford.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/they-fought-the-media-law-and-the-media-law-won/
Heelguru- slight correction. The firm doesn't care to prevent democratic action against corporate excesses- it merely knows that its clients will pay it to do so. Amorality is the rule.
heh heh. practice makes perfect.
http://www.wikileaks.com/