PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Internet community is closely watching a slander suit that has been filed in the United States, which may set a legal precedent. Seattle-based Wade Cook Financial Corp, a financial education firm, last Monday filed a slander suit against 10 anonymous users of Yahoo!s Business and Finance message board.

The users had allegedly posted messages that the company's founder, Wade Cook, had been arrested for accepting kickbacks, an allegation which the company has denied. According to a Reuters report, the firm said it might subpoena Yahoo! to hand over the real names of the users, although the Internet portal itself is not a target of the lawsuit.

MGG Pillai, owner of the popular Sang Kancil online forum, said the case would bring some measure of 'accountability" to Internet postings. The recent spate of legal actions in Malaysia, Australia, the United States and Britain seek to place responsibility on the owner or service provider for what appears on an online forum.

However, he said that the owner and service provider does not have control over statements posted on a forum. Often, they only see it hours after it is posted," he said, in comparison to print and other media, where a document or statement can be vetted before publication.

Independent security consultant Dinesh Nair said that Wade Cook Financial had every right to sue the 10 people, and even subpoena Yahoo! to divulge their real identities. 'In this particular scenario, Yahoo! is the medium upon which the alleged slanderous content was delivered, and thus serves as a real-world analogy to newspapers and magazines.

Like a journalist who wants to protect his source, Yahoo! might choose not to (divulge this information) and thus be penalised for contempt of court," Dinesh said.

True identity

Sang Kancil's Pillai believes that anonymous mailers should be held liable for their postings, but the difficulty lies in tracking them down. 'This is so in real life ... you have to first find the defendant, then serve the writ on him.

The court action in the United States, it seems to me, is at that tentative first stage," he added. Further, finding out true identities is even more difficult in the online world. Internet user ICL Kwang said the suit was silly and a waste of time, as even Yahoo! would not be able to confirm the true identities of the users.

"When you sign-up for an email account, for instance, you can provide any name. There's no way Yahoo! - or any other Web-based e-mail service provider - can verify your true identity," he said. In the Seattle case, the federal court suit has named 10 'John Does" as defendants.

'These John Does are using the anonymity afforded by the Internet to damage the reputation and undermine the business of a legitimate company," said Wade Cook Financial attorney Paul Anderson.

What makes this virtual attack even more deplorable is the fact that these falsehoods are posted on Yahoo! message boards for millions of people to read and they cannot be removed from the Internet by the company," he said.

The lawsuit comes as debate grows over Internet privacy, with users fretting about how to protect their identities from prying eyes and companies complaining about the ease with which rumours are spread over the global computer network.

Of late, more Malaysians too have been turning to the Internet as an alternative source of information and news. However, this has raised concerns amongst the authorities of misinformation and rumours being disseminated across the Internet.

Last October, the then Deputy Home Minister Datuk Mohd Tajol Rosli Ghazali said the police would 'check every bit of information and leaflet' posted on the internet after the arrest of four alleged cyber rumour-mongers.

On Sept 24 last year, three men and a woman claimed trial at magistrate's courts in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya. They were charged with spreading rumours via the Internet; rumours which sparked fear that riots had broken out in Kuala Lumpur on Aug 8.

Mimos Bhd, the nation's first Internet Service Provider, does not "support" anonymity by Internet users over its Jaring network, said its vice-president (government sector) Dr Mohamed Awang lah. He said Jaring users are not allowed to post anonymous messages through its servers. "Slander is slander ... I don't think the Internet (as the medium) is an issue."