Exposed “Skank” Blogger Threatens Google With Privacy Suit, Is Happy to Talk About It
by Peter Kafka
Posted on August 24, 2009 at 7:36 AM PT
What do you do if you’re a blogger who thinks your privacy has been unfairly violated? If you’re Rosemary Port, you threaten to file a high-profile lawsuit, then go to newspapers and TV networks to talk about it.
That’s the strategy Port is pursuing now that she’s been outed as the “skank blogger”–the person who used Google’s Blogger service to anonymously insult former model Liskula Cohen.
Last week, Cohen convinced a New York court to compel Google to hand over Port’s identifying information, and then went on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to talk about the nasty names that Port had called her. Now Port claims that she’s been wronged and promises to file a $15 million privacy lawsuit against Google (GOOG) to prove it. She’ll be discussing her lack of privacy on “Good Morning America” tomorrow.
It really doesn’t seem worth parsing Port’s arguments, laid out in the New York Daily News (the paper took the photo of her that appears above). But let me briefly note that her attorney thinks that the First Amendment guarantees her the right to blog anonymously using a private corporation’s service. And that said blog, “Skanks in NYC,” is akin to the Federalist Papers.
Oh. And for the record, I’d never heard of her until I read her interview in the News this morning.
