Ryan T. Mrazik writes:
In Fodor v. Doe, 2011 WL 1629573 (D. Nev. Apr. 27, 2011), a federal magistrate judge in the District of Nevada adopted a two-part, “prima facie” test for determining whether to authorize third-party discovery seeking the identity of an anonymous online speaker. Under this test, before authorizing the third-party discovery, the court must determine that (1) the plaintiff has a real evidentiary basis to believe the anonymous defendant had engaged in the conduct complained of and (2) the plaintiff’s need to identify the speaker and proceed with his case justifies the extent of the harm to the anonymous speaker’s First Amendment rights and privacy. Applying the test in this case, the court authorized the plaintiff to serve limited third-party discovery to try to identify “Tazmanian,” the anonymous author of an allegedly defamatory blog post on Blogspot.com.
Read more about the case and decision on Digestible Law.