Google Ordered To Reveal the Name of an Anonymous Indian Blogger

Google has been ordered to reveal real identity of a blogger using the company’s Blogger service in a lawsuit filed against the internet giant by a local Indian company. Unlike what you would expect given all the news that we hear from countries like Egypt about bloggers persecuted because of reporting on the news and events their governments were unhappy about (or in a manner that did not meet the expectations of those governments), this has nothing to do with freedom of speech applied to politics.

The Indian blogger writing under a nick name “Toxic Writer” covered various events related to Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects Ltd., a Mumbai construction company that was obviously unhappy about what he had to say about them, unhappy to the extent of filing a lawsuit against Google (I thought everyone who wanted has already sued Google but it proves I was wrong).

The company claimed that the blogger initiated a hate campaign on his (or her?) blog against them and the lawsuit was intended to take down the blog itself and also make Google reveal the personal information (including real name) of the person behind this blog.

And now Google will have to oblige and while the blog itself is already down, it will also have to reveal the identity of the person behind the blog. I’d expect that as soon as the company knows the identity of its blogging enemy, they will immediate file a new lawsuit - this time against the blogger. And it will be even more interesting to know what the blogger is ordered to do - stop blogging, publish a rebutter or maybe compensate for the reputation damages because this will probably be what will happen to other bloggers in similar cases.

Anyway I am sure think this may very well become only the first case in a very long row of similar lawsuits against Google that hosts a huge number of blogs on Blogspot almost without any control over them whatsoever - and a blog will only be considered as violating the Terms of Service in one case: if anyone chooses to let Google know that this or that blog is spammy or contains hate speech or whatever. It is a common knowledge that Blogspot is the best place for all kinds of spammers who use the free service to generate some revenue off AdSense.

But of course the free blogging tool can be used for tons of other purposes, including defaming a company for something it has done to harm you (or has not done but you have your reasons to defame them out of revenge or simply because this company happens to be your competitor). And even if this case will teach some bloggers to at least do the research and fact checking when planning to let the world know how evil this or that company is, it will hardly suggest any way for Google to identify blogs that may get it in trouble in advance.

And if you live in India and know some additional background details about the situation, do please share them with us in the comments below.