Two months ago, New York model Liskula Cohen made headlines when she won a lawsuit against Google, compelling the company to reveal the identity of the anonymous blogger that had called her a “lying, whoring skank.” The decision prompted considerable discussion throughout the blogosphere, with many people asking if it meant the end of anonymity online (it doesn’t) or whether the blogger – Rosemary Port – had her first amendment rights violated (she didn’t). In fact, just about the only question that wasn’t asked was what would happen to Liskula Cohen?
According to the New Zealand Times Herald, Ms. Cohen has decided to use her newfound fame to become a spokesperson for cyberbullying.
From the article:
The insight Cohen has been granted through her experience and actions has placed her now at the forefront of the cyber-bullying issue.
She says she had no doubts she should take up the cause after she received a message of support from the mother of Meghan Meier, a 13-year-old girl who killed herself in 2006 after being cyberbullied by a friend’s mother posing as an online boyfriend.
“We do have the freedom of speech but we don’t have the freedom to defame,” reasons Cohen. “If the internet is just supposed to be the Wild West, a do-what-you-want, say-what-you-want place and no longer a reliable source of information – which is what I think it was intended for – then I want no part of it.
“It’s been very frustrating for me. Now, I find myself limiting my internet use to just going to reputable sites,” she continues. “I used to surf all over the place and make the assumption that what I read was truthful. Now it’s a case of, well, who knows?”
Indeed she has. Now, more than ever, issues of Internet privacy and Online Reputation Management have come to the forefront of modern society.
The article goes on to explore a number of issues related to Internet privacy and Online Reputation Management, including identity theft, sexting, and crimes being caught on video and shared online.
As the web continues to evolve, it is important that there are people out there working to educate the public on these issues. Here at the ReputationDefender Blog, we’d like to wish kudos to Ms. Cohen for her worthwhile efforts in this area. If you’d like to learn more about cyberbullying, check out ReputationDefender’s How-To Guide to “Stop Cyberbullying.”
2 comments ↓
This is nonsense.The idea that this case bears any resemblance to actual cyberbullying is insulting to anyone who’s actually been a victim. Cyberbullying is a repeated on-line attack against the character of a person/persons from somebody they are acquainted with.
As near as I can tell, there was no pattern of aggression here. It was a fairly brief tirade that was supposedly triggered by some interaction Cohen had with the blogger’s boyfriend. The blog was probably read by all of 5 people before the lawsuit and it eventually disappeared altogether. You can’t even find it at The Wayback Machine anymore. I read it before it was deleted and yawned. These days, kids say worse stuff to their friends in front of their parents. Much worse stuff (and outright lies) is said almost every single day on network TV about Barrack Obama.
The fact that this was a fairly vague, anonymous, attack against a (so-called) celebrity dramatically reduces the impact of the comments. This is especially so when the victim says “I’m tall, I’m blond, I’ve been modelling for many years, and people get jealous. If I had to deal with everyone who is jealous, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.” She’s too famous and beautiful to care what the little people think of her.
Bullying implies the offender is the more powerful one. The opposite is the case here. Cohen is the famous one with all the tools at her disposal, lawyers, agents etc. This is not a victim of a bully, this is somebody, acting on a hunch, out to settle a score in the courts.
If it wasn’t for the lawsuit, the comments would be no different than anybody saying any negative opinion of anybody famous. For example, me saying “Tom Cruise is a hyper midget who can’t act!” Only AFTER winning the lawsuit did Cohen confirm her suspicion that she knew the blogger and they weren’t just random comments from a stranger about a public figure.
This is not cyberbullying.
It is, however, an attack on Free Speech. To paraphrase Judge Mathis, “The first defence to defamation is truth. The second is that it’s an honestly held opinion.” If a comment is true, or the blogger honestly thinks its true, then it isn’t slanderous. Everything the blogger said about Cohen is truth or mere opinion. Cohen has publicly admitted to her “bar hopping” past, which is undeniable after her publicized altercation with a bar employee, and now claims she’s too old carry on like that anymore. “Ageing”? “Running around bars at her age”? Sounds like uncontested fact to me.
Calling a 36 year old working in one of the sleaziest, most youth biased, professions on earth an “ageing skank” is little different than saying a “lying politician” or a “sleazy lawyer”. Any reasonable person would consider this a plausible opinion. Besides, models are also hyper scrutinized withing their own profession. How much damage can one anonymous blogger do that decades of working in the fashion industry hasn’t?
The ONLY argument for cyberbullying Cohen had would be that the blogger knew her and was airing personal laundry. But in order to find out that she knew the blogger, she first had to get the judge to (inexplicably) violate the blogger’s Freedom of Speech by considering the comments potentially slanderous, which they aren’t.
Sure, the comments are not nice, but Freedom of Speech allows us to be “not nice”as long as we aren’t being dishonest or deliberatively misrepresenting facts.
This was an injustice.
Whatever your opinion, there is one undeniable reality. The reputation of both parties have been more harmed by the fallout of this legal case than any single blogger could have ever had.
This video explains it all! http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1924598
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