Skip to content

Technology & Innovation — August 19, 2009

Note to Self: Don’t Call Anyone “Skank” Online

Jessica Liebman

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

There’s a certain Wild West mentality that reigns supreme on the internet. That could all change with a precedent-setting court ruling on a recent name-calling incident. Former Australian Vogue cover girl Liskula Cohen won a legal battle to unmask an anonymous blogger who referred to her as a “skank” on his “Skanks in NYC” blog. The entry, which Cohen asserted was defamatory, ridiculed the former model as a “40-something” who “may have been hot 10 years ago.” Justice Joan Madden of the Manhattan supreme court agreed with Cohen, rejecting the defendant’s claim that blogs “serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting,” and should not be taken as fact. Google has been ordered to reveal the name of the blogger at fault. Do you think cyberbullying should be protected online?

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related

Person examining a petri dish with tweezers, holding small colored objects, against a dark background.

Are microplastics really destroying our health?

They’re in our brains, hearts, and blood — but what are they doing to us?

A statue of a thoughtful, seated philosopher on the right seems to be contemplating a calling, while a standing figure holding a lyre on the left adds harmony against the textured background.

Everyday Philosophy: Can you have a “calling” without a caller?

If you’re an atheist with a vocation, who laid that path for you?

Close-up image of a human iris featuring vibrant blue and yellow hues with a dark pupil in the center.

The mystery at the heart of consciousness

“Is it possible that consciousness is a much more basic phenomenon in nature and is essentially pervading everything?”

▸

10 min

—

with

CMB polarization Planck

Starts With A Bang

Ask Ethan: Does the CMB really “prove” the Big Bang?

Since the mid-1960s, the CMB has been identified with the Big Bang’s leftover glow. Could any alternative explanations still work?

A wasp illustration in blue on grid paper is overlaid on a close-up image of effervescent bubbles in a golden alcoholic liquid.

The first known animal that’s “immune” to alcohol intoxication

Could studying the Oriental hornet lead to a treatment for people with alcohol use disorder?

Up Next

Technology & Innovation

Tired of Cash, Local Communities Using Alternative Currencies to Come Together

We’ve all heard enough tired analogies about money to fill a bank vault, but what happens when a recession, a lagging dollar, and general social malaise all conspire together? By […]