PROVIDED BY CNNNEXT.COM
Published on Jun 27, 2015
"Here's a reminder that online anonymity can't always protect you: the Illinois Supreme Court has ordered Comcast to reveal the identity of a subscriber involved in a defamation lawsuit.
The case was filed by Bill Hadley who ran for the Stephenson County board a few years ago.
In 2011, the Freeport Journal Standard published an article about him, where the defendant (using the moniker "Fuboy") left a couple of comments, including this: "Hadley is a Sandusky waiting to be exposed.
Check out the view he has of Empire from his front door." Empire an elementary school right across Hadley's residence.
Hadley filed a lawsuit shortly after that, which started a lengthy and complicated legal dance with the newspaper's parent company, Gatehouse Media, and Comcast.
He had been in possession of ‘Fuboy's' IP since 2012, but Comcast required a court order to unveil the commenter's name and address from the start.
The defendant maintains that what he said doesn't warrant a dafamation suit, since it's 'not a crime to have the last name Sandusky,' and readers wouldn't associate Hadley's name with something bad without prior knowledge of 'extrinsic facts.'” *
