JUST WHERE IS THE INTERNET, ANYWAY?

Dan L’Hommedieu is hopping mad, and he’s not going to take it any more. His court case points out yet another way in which laws first molded in the 18^th and 19^th centuries create sometimes odd results when applied to 21^st century technology.

Seems that Mr. L’Hommedieu, a computer support tech from Holly Springs, North Carolina, somehow managed to draw the ire of one Dr. Praveen Kumar of Hudson, Ohio. Dr. Kumar’s beef with L’Hommedieu is not known, but it was apparently serious enough that Kumar put the time and effort into designing a website called DanLHommedieuLovesMen.com. Said site not only implies that Mr. L (I’m getting tired of typing his whole last name) is homosexual, it also lists his address and phone number, with asterisks substituted for a few of the letters and numbers so that the viewer could not, supposedly, tell what the address was. Assuming, of course, that the viewer was a complete fool.

Don’t bother looking for the site, by the way. Kumar’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) has taken the site down, which is the usual practice of ISP’s alerted to material residing on their bandwidth that might draw complaints or legal action. But this wasn’t enough to satisfy Mr. L. He decided to take his libel case against Dr. Kumar to court in Raleigh.

Only problem is, Kumar isn’t in Raleigh. As far as anyone can tell, he’s never been to North Carolina at all. So how does a court extend the long arm of North Carolina libel law into the wilds of darkest Ohio?

Well, Mr. L argued, Kumar either knew or should have known that people in North Carolina would see the site and that Mr. L’s reputation would be thereby damaged in our state. Frankly, I don’t see how. Let’s face it, DanLHommedieuLovesMen.com is not the sort of website name you’re likely to stumble across in casual websurfing. It takes me four or five tries to type it when I’m actually trying to. Mr. L himself only found it by typing his own name into an Internet search engine, a widespread practice sometimes referred to as "ego-surfing". Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens, however, agreed with Mr. L and ruled that Kumar would have to come from Ohio to defend the lawsuit.

Like most thorny cases, this one involves two important and competing interests. On the one hand, the peculiar nature of the Internet, which combines both global reach and as much anonymity as the user may desire, has led in far too many cases to brutal incivility. People will type things on a message board or in a chatroom that would get them punched in the mouth were they to say them in face to face conversation. The aptly named Yahoo! Message Boards, for just one example, contain language that could make Eminem cover his ears and a level of discourse that makes a bar fight look like a Harvard debating society. So far, the ‘Net is a land without consequences for behaving like a cretin. It would be nice if there were some.

On the other hand, that very global reach means that people across the world can read and be affected by what’s put up there. For example, having this column on the Pilot’s website has led to my being contacted by people from across the globe. A few weeks ago, very nice young fellow from Great Britain politely took exception to some of my comments about his country. An online acquaintance from South Africa periodically mails in with comments and the occasional snapshot of him drinking Scotch with gorgeous women in Capetown bars (Wotcher, Don. Whatever that means). Heck, just last week, a fellow from Nigeria made me an extraordinary business proposition that could make me millions if I just sent him my bank account number.

But what would happen if someone overseas really took exception to what I or any of the other Pilot columnists said here? What if the nice young fellow from Britain had been a mean rich guy with a pack of snarling barristers on retainer? (Don’t let the wigs fool you. Those guys are like pit bulls.) For another example, would I have to go to Belgrade if Slobodan Milosevic took exception to me describing him as "a noxious weed who needs to be pruned back before he’s all over the Balkans like kudzu"? Or have my delusions of grandeur have gone completely out of control? You be the judge.

Allowing people to sue those that have offended them in venues far from the offender’s home is a practice that practically invites abuse of the court system. But I have a solution. Let people complaining of defamation on the Internet and those defending against such claims have their day in court—on the Internet. Complaints, motions and other papers could be served by e-mail. Depositions could be done via chatroom. And with the advent of high-speed connections and webcams, you could conduct whole trials online. It’s a technological solution to a technology problem.

And who would be the judge in this new ‘Net-Court? Well, modesty forbids me making the obvious suggestion, but I could I suppose, make myself available.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.