Suing for online bad behavior

...is often not very successful. For one thing federal law (47 U.S.C. §230) "creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service" Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327, 330 (4th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 524 U.S. 937 (1998).

I bring it up because according to this piece -

Canadian model Liskula Cohen has sued Google for a number of snarky remarks that were made by a blogger using the company’s Blogger service. The NY Daily News reports that the former Vogue cover girl has been called ’skanky’ and ‘an old hag’ by an anonymous blogger on a website called Skanks in NYC (could be deemed NSFW).

The piece describes it as a "defamation suit" but, while the comments in question are vicious, I interpret them as someone's opinion as opposed to statements of fact - and opinion is a defense against a claim of defamation. (So is truth, for that matter. Wouldn't that make for an entertaining factual inquiry: "The court finds as a matter of fact that the supermodel is/is not "a skank"").

Maybe she's not suing Google on the defamation claim, though. The article says she "seeks a court order compelling Google and its Blogger service to identify the anonymous blogger." But I would think that the way a plaintiff would normally go about that would be to sue the unknown blogger (as a "Doe(s)") and within that suit subpoena the provider for either the blogger's identification or information that could lead to the blogger's identification.