Judge Won't Force Twitter to Reveal Anonymous Trolls

Who is the anonymous person tweeting that Music Group Macao CEO Uli Behringer engages with prostitutes and evades taxes?

The company which supplies audio equipment including loudspeakers, amplifiers and mixers is no closer to finding out after a federal judge in San Francisco refused to order Twitter to reveal the individual(s) behind @NotUliBehringer and @FakeUli.

In a ruling on Monday, U.S. District Judge Laurel Beeler writes how she is concerned that breaching anonymity "would unduly chill speech and deter other critics from exercising their First Amendment rights."

Yes, anonymous trolls enjoy rights too.

Last April, Music Group Macao was so concerned with them that it filed a defamation lawsuit against "John Does" over tweets that said the company "designs its products to break in 3-6 months" and "encourages domestic violence and misogyny."

After a judge in Washington granted expedited discovery, the decision on whether or not to enforce subpoenas against Twitter landed with Judge Beeler, who got some encouragement by Twitter to make a First Amendment analysis before it blabbed.

She does so with gusto.

"The challenged speech here consists mainly of flatly derogatory statements about Music Group's CEO, and, apparently to a lesser degree, some criticism of the company's products that likely constitutes legitimate commercial criticism," the judge writes.

Unflattering tweets about Music Group's business practices and products are clearly protected by the First Amendment, she adds.

As for tweets that Behringer evades taxes or travels internationally while concealing things inside his body, Beeler says, "The first comment is troubling, the latter merely crass. But they are both onetime comments. Even the tax-evasion remark would likely be read as what it is: one rant among countless others from someone with an obvious grudge against Music Group's CEO. The court does not think that, in the eyes of an ordinary person, this one-time comment would lower the CEO in the community's estimation."

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Judge Won't Force Twitter to Reveal Anonymous Trolls