On February 27, 2003, the Stanford Center for Internet and Society (CIS) convinced Primus Telecommunications to withdraw its subpoena seeking the identifying information of individuals who anonymously posted messages on a Yahoo! message board discussing Primus. Primus served Yahoo! with a subpoena on December 31, 2002 demanding that Yahoo! identify eleven “John Doe” users. Primus admitted that these individuals were not accused of any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Primus sought to unmask the users on the unsubstantiated belief that they may have had contact with the defendant in a suit filled by Primus in Virginia.
Representing several of these anonymous posters, CIS challenged Primus’s “guilt-by-association” subpoena as an unacceptable violation of the users’ First Amendment rights. On January 31, 2003, CIS filed a motion to quash Primus’s subpoena in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In response to CIS’s motion, counsel for Primus reconsidered the validity and necessity of its subpoena and agreed to withdraw its subpoena. On February 27, 2003 Primus instructed Yahoo! not to release the users information.
The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a public interest technology law and policy program at Stanford Law School and a part of Law, Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School. As part of its clinical training program, CIS represents individual clients in cases involving an individual’s rights to free speech and anonymity in trademark and "John Doe subpoena" cases, and provides specialized legal information to Internet authors and publishers, as well as practicing attorneys. If you have any questions, comments, or would be interested in being represented by CIS, please contact us via our webpage at cyberlaw.Stanford.edu or by phone at 650.723.5674.