Over the past few weeks everyone at the CMLP and Harvard's Cyberlaw Clinic (with whom we share an office) has been focused on the question of what legal protections courts should apply to anonymous speech (see this post about our amicus participation in the Maxon v. Ottawa Publishing case).  When you are immersed in an issue like this, it is easy to forget how lucky we are to live in a country that has robust protections for speech.

In a post earlier this week, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist reminds us that our neighbor to the north is grappling with this same issue, but has come up with a very different answer.  In his post, Geist reports that an Ontario court has ordered the operators of the right-wing Canadian forum site, FreeDominion.ca, to turn over personally identifying information for eight anonymous posters to the site.

Last Friday, a circuit judge in Nashville, Tennessee ruled from the bench that the First Amendment protects anoynymous Internet speech and adopted the Dendrite International v. Doe standard for balancing the speaker's First Amendment right against the would-be plaintiff's right to legal redress for actionable speech.

Waldo Jacquith, the Virginia blogger targeted with an outrageously broad subpoena back in January (see my previous post), filed a brief last week arguing that he should not be required to turn over the IP addresses of those who viewed and commented on an article posted to his blog, as well as his email correspondence relating to the article.  Paul Alan Levy of

Jurisdiction: 

• Virginia