IDs of online forum users sought

Posted on Sat, Apr. 29, 2006

IDs of online forum users sought
By AMAN BATHEJA
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

S-T ARCHIVES/SHARON M. STEINMAN
Gerald Haddock, chairman of Sabine Production Partners, says that defamatory comments were written about him online.
A Fort Worth businessman has subpoenaed an Internet company to find out who made unflattering comments about him on an online message board.
Gerald Haddock, an attorney and former corporate executive who is chairman of Fort Worth-based Sabine Production Partners has subpoenaed Yahoo to find identifying information on 28 people who allegedly posted defamatory comments about him on message boards this year.
"Somebody has to stand up and be protected against anonymous posters who decide they want to take some liberties with their postings," Haddock said.
The online exchanges took place on Yahoo Finance message boards devoted to two oil-royalty trusts: Dallas-based Sabine Royalty Trust and Fort Worth-based San Juan Basin Royalty Trust. The conversations in late January and early February centered on an effort by Sabine Production Partners to take over Sabine Royalty Trust.
Royalty trusts are investment vehicles in which the unit holders own shares of specific reserves. The yield to investors is based on cash flow from the property rather than the financial performance of a company.
Haddock was lead transactions attorney for investor Richard Rainwater for nearly a decade, and he served as chief executive of Crescent Real Estate Equities, where Rainwater is chairman. He is now a director of Fort Worth-based Cano Petroleum.
Some of those who posted comments were skeptical of Haddock's takeover bid. They doubted statements from the partnership that Sabine Royalty Trust's reserves were in a state of decline and suspected that the partnership was trying to swindle the trust's unit holders.
"Apparently that Haddock guy is smoking something stronger than cigarettes. Looks like they just wasted some money trying to steal this trust," wrote utguy54 on Jan. 17.
"This attempt by these bank robbers to separate us from our money is beyond the pale. This is one of the biggest scams I have ever seen," wrote oliver4thid on Jan. 25 on the Sabine Royalty Trust message board.
The partnership eventually suspended its effort, citing geopolitical issues affecting the stability of oil and gas supplies.
Haddock said he was especially upset by posters who suggested that a $1 million donation that he and his wife made to Baylor University Law School was made with stolen money.
"They don't think they can get caught," he said. "That's the problem with anonymous postings."
In recent years, Internet companies have been served with hundreds of subpoenas asking for identifying information about postings on message boards, according to Paul Levy, a lawyer with Public Citizen, a consumer-advocacy group. The cases have been nicknamed CyberSLAPP suits, an acronym for strategic lawsuits against public participation. Public Citizen helps run CyberSLAPP.org, a Web site that gathers information on such suits.When faced with a subpoena, most major Internet companies regularly provide identifying information about its members, Levy said.
"There is no right to anonymity for defamatory statements," said Jeffrey Wolf, Haddock's lawyer.
Many courts, including ones in Texas, grant a petitioner the right to subpoena an Internet company for that private information without looking at the merits of the case first, Levy said. Some states are starting to require that judges determine that a case has merit before allowing someone to obtain such information.
"The marketplace of ideas does benefit from people speaking the truth," Levy said. "What we say is encourage the marketplace of ideas while making sure that someone who has a genuine libel case is really able to go forward."
Last month, a Tarrant County district judge granted Haddock the right to subpoena Yahoo based on a petition that included more than 50 pages of related postings from the company's message boards. On Friday, Wolf said that Yahoo had not yet provided the information requested and that he would file a motion to compel the company to abide by the subpoena.
Earlier this month, several people posted on the Sabine Royalty Trust message board that they had received e-mails from Yahoo notifying them that their information had been subpoenaed and that Yahoo was planning to comply. Several posters debated Haddock's motives.
"This appears nothing more than an effort to shift blame from a bad business model that the proposal was based on to critics merely exercising their right of free speech," wrote kruzeman.
In a separate post, kruzeman wrote, "I don't really think anyone had personal animosity towards Mr. Haddock."

Aman Batheja, (817) 390-7695 abatheja@star-telegram.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/14459625.htm