Law Court requires Time Warner to ID anonymous e-mailer

PORTLAND – The state supreme court ruled Friday that Time Warner Cable must turn over account information about the sender of an insulting e-mail in a case that sought to test the waters of Internet anonymity in Maine.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that federal law allows a judge to order Time Warner to turn over information about the sender of the e-mail.

The case stemmed from an e-mail sent to several residents of Great Diamond Island. The sender made it appear that the e-mail came from Ronald Fitch, and it featured a cartoon lampooning Fitch, his wife and their dead St. Bernard.

The unanimous ruling by the Law Court means that the e-mail sender’s name will be revealed in a civil lawsuit brought by Fitch.

Paul Alan Levy, lawyer for watchdog group Public Citizen in Washington, D.C., said he was discouraged that the narrowly focused ruling did not address First Amendment concerns. Public Citizen contends e-mail is a form of anonymous free speech and protected under the First Amendment.

“I’m disappointed on the one hand,” Levy said. “On the other hand, the issue plainly remains alive, to be decided another day.”

Fitch’s lawyer, Tom Connolly, said the court was right to let the lawsuit proceed and force the Internet povider to identify the e-mail sender. “It’s not a First Amendment issue,” Connolly said. “You don’t have a right to harass people.”

The e-mail that angered Fitch was sent on Christmas Eve 2003 in the wake of an acrimonous dispute among residents over the use of golf carts on Great Diamond Island, which is two miles from Portland’s watefront.

Fitch was being ridiculed because some islanders didn’t like the influence he was exerting in the dispute, which was eventually resolved.

Fitch traced the e-mail to a Time Warner Cable account and sued the sender, who was identified in the suit as “John or Jane Doe.” He brought civil action, and the judge ordered Time Warner to turn over the account information.

In its ruling, the court said the federal Cable Communications Policy Act allowed a court to compel Time Warner to produce the account information.

The court declined to address the issue raised by First Amendment advocates of whether a higher standard should be imposed for Internet Service Providers to release account information in deference to the right to anonymous speech.