In the previous case last week, John Finn, owner of the Sunderland property firm Pallion Housing, said he was to be cross-examined and admitted being in charge of a website that hosted a propaganda campaign against a rival property firm, Gentoo Group.

"This case illustrates an increasingly important legal issue: proving who is responsible for the publication of anonymous material on the internet. This is likely to be a significant issue in defamation cases in the future," said Dan Tench, of Olswang, the law firm representing Gentoo.

In the case of the Sheffield Wednesday fans, the judge ordered that the identity of three of the 11 fans were to revealed, since their postings might "reasonably be understood to allege greed, selfishness, untrustworthiness and dishonest behaviour”.

According to the judge, the fans’ right to anonymity was outweighed by the managers’ right to protect their reputation. The identity of the other eight fans, whose postings were deemed to be merely abusive or to be understood as jokes, didn’t have to be revealed.

At a time when many consider the ethical landscape of the Web to be some kind of a Wild West, these back-to-back rulings could pave the way towards more regulated user-comment policies, both for websites and users.

Source: Guardian