Forum Trolls Are Handed Flame Torches By Court

While it is well acknowledged that Troll Forums annoy this piss out of everyone that has ever stumbled onto a forum, and while we all know that a site with a few bad trolls can quickly kill its community, it appears that a California Appeals Court feels that they have a right to be scandalous and are protected by their first amendment rights.

The case in question goes back nearly three years to 2005, when then SFBC International CEO Lisa Krinsky filed suit against 10 anonymous forum posters on the Yahoo! Finance forum (sidenote: how big of a dork are you to post on a Finance forum?). The posters had made some pretty obsurd and scandalous posts, including this post in reference to Krinsky:

"I will reciprocate felatoin [sic] with Lisa even though she has fat thighs, a fake medical degree, 'queefs' and has poor feminine hygiene."

The posters went on to mock her work ability and her directly. An initial judge had ruled that the posts were, in fact, malicious and that they were intended to drive down stock prices and cause harm to her and the company. However, the Appeals court ruled that because the statements were not actual fact, that they do fall under First Amendment protections.

We're not sure at this point if the case will be further challenged. In the end, it's a good decision to protect peoples rights. Don't get me wrong, my general reaction to Forum Trolls, including idiots like these people, are that they should be forced to get jobs (any will do, my guess is that's why they have so much time to troll) and their computers should be taken away from them. But that's how I would do it in Jesse James-onia. Fortunately for all of us, we live in the United States, so protections are given to people, even stupid Trolls.

Appeals court: First Amendment protects forum trolls too [Ars Technica]