Paul Arena, formerly CEO, and Nathaniel Bradley, former chief technology officer, have launched a libel suit against the “John Doe” defendants, who are accused of posting defamatory comments on various websites after news broke out that Arena and Bradley resigned from their positions in 2012.
Commenters with usernames like BullTrader, sandwormrider and lookoutbelow99 supposedly falsely accused the executives of pumping up the price of stock, stole money from investors and behaved inappropriately while in office. One commenter even called the two “the bangbros of pump stock.”
“The posts were abusive, vulgar, and damning to the plaintiffs, and were accessible to millions of Internet users around the world,” the complaint [url=http:// http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/exclusive-executives-sue-internet-trolls-abusive-comments-article-1.1617702 t=_blank]says.
Arena and Bradely will subpoena Internet service providers to divulge the names of the commenters, with the hopes of replacing the usernames with real names. The lawsuit seeks monetary compensation and an injunction that will stop the commenters from continuing to troll online.
The number of comments about the two apparently increased around January 30 of this year, according to the Daily Dot, when Arena was appointed as executive chairman of AudioEye, where he was also elected to the board of directors. Bradley is the CEO of the company.
In May 2013, PETA attempted a similar lawsuit, demanding that Huffington Post reveal the identities of three commenters who supposedly posted defamatory comments about the animal rights organization.
Should Arena and Bradely’s lawsuit continue through the courts, it may set a precedent on how much license anonymous commenters have to be potentially libelous.
