Are forum users who establish their identity more entitled to protection from libel? In an online forum or social network does a user who ties the identity of their presence there to their real world identity have more recourse open to them with regard to being libeled than a user who uses a pseudonym? Asked another way, is it possible to commit libel against an anonymous pseudonym?
There's really no difference. Quoting from here, What if I change the person's name? To state a defamation claim, the person claiming defamation need not be mentioned by name—the plaintiff only needs to be reasonably identifiable. So if you defame the &quot;government executive who makes his home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,&quot; it is still reasonably identifiable as the president. What does the whole thing depend on? It depends on how easy it is to identify the pseudonym-using plaintiff. They don't have more recourse, per se - nor do they have more protection under the law - but it may be harder for them to win the case. On the upside, the statement might not cause them as much harm when compared to a person using their actual name.
In the US, the author would be able to wind an infringement lawsuit against the re-publisher. Title 17, the US copyright law codified, grants the author the exclusive right to authorize republication, and does not require that a person use their real name. The argument "It was on the internet, it's in the public domain" is utterly without legal merit. The same goes for the assertion that a person loses his rights if he is uncontactable. The author has stated the terms of the license, so there isn't even a reasonable argument that the infringement is innocent (unknowing: "I thought it was with permission). There is no requirement that you have to allow a potential user to hassle you about the license terms. The one thing that is special regarding anonymous and pseudonymous works is that under 17 USC 302, "copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication, or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first". For a work whose author is identified, copyright "endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death". This assumes that the host site has not preempted author's license: Stack Exchange, for example, preempts an author's exclusive right, so you can copy stuff from here accorting to the SE terms of usage.
According to Julian Assange, CNN committed a crime violating § 135.60 of the New York criminal code "coercion". Reddit, while being a private company, is still considered a public forum. Anything said on these sites can be used against you if your actually identity is discovered.
Is the their username alone, without any attached profile (like their email address or real Name) still considered personal data that has to be deleted? For something to be ‘personal data’ it must information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. An identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly. In other words: If the natural person can be indirectly identified from the username, it is personal data. If he cannot, it is not personal data. This obviously depends on the circumstances. If the user used something very similar to his real name, or his email address or uses the same nickname on a lot of different systems, then it probably is personal data. If it is an unique pseudonym that is not used elsewhere, it is less likely. If you want to make sure you comply with the right to erasure, you may want to scrub your wiki database, replacing all the username of the deleted user with "anonymous" (or something like that). If you want to be able to treat these as separate users, your scrubbing process may use unique anonymous identifiers ("anon-1", "anon-2", and so on).
No, the truth of the statement is the defense. It is true that The New York Times reported that A did X, even if it is false that A did X. Your claim is about the NYT, not about A. If you just repeat the false allegation (republishing it), that is libel.
The question reads: I see an NDA as a pseudo-public document, something you need to read in detail before you acknowledge and opt-in to limit rights (discussion of topic/tech). Unfortunately for this view, the law normally sees an NDA as a private contract, except when it is alleged that it violates public policy. If an NDA explicitly or implicitly includes itself in the list of things not to be disclosed, then posting it would be a violation of the contract. In such a case the party posting the agreement would be subject to whatever consequence the agreement specifies for violation, unless that person had a valid defense. The operator of a web site where the document might be posted would not normally ne a party to the agreement, and so would not be liable for hosting it, unless some other limitation applies, beyond the NDA itself. An NDA can indeed be a significant limitation on the signer's freedom to discuss certain topics, and a person would be wise to consider it in detail, and perhaps consult a lawyer, before signing one. But that does not mean that the person should post or distribute it publicly, nor that the person is automatically entitled to consult NDAs that others have signed. There are sufficient sample NDA forms available that a person can compare an offered NDA with other possibilities, and get an idea if an offered NDA goes beyond the usual terms.
Yes such a username would be personal data. It is information that relates to an identifiable person. In this context,a person isn't identifiable only if you can infer their real-world identity, but already if you can single out one person's records. Thus, your random IDs and any linked information would be personal data as well. Just because something is personal data doesn't mean that processing it is illegal. It just means you need a legal basis. That could be necessity for performing a contract with the data subject (like saving game progress), a legitimate interest, or consent. Taking into account GDPR principles like &quot;data protection by design and by default&quot;, it could be sensible to hide a players stats from the leaderboard until they give consent. On the other hand, you may have a legitimate interest to provide leaderboard data for ranking/comparison, especially if the leaderboard entries are pseudonymized. In any case, it should be clear to the users which information is visible to others.
Any legal issues for writing about your parent(s)? No. Furthermore, the answer you got from the Free Legal Aid Clinic is wrong. There is no need for pseudonyms or ambiguities such as &quot;a family member&quot;. As long as your statements of fact are truthful, identifying actual individuals in your narrative is lawful (this applies to US as well as Canada defamation law). A word of caution, though: Your post reflects deficiencies in how you explain yourself. This has more to do with your way of articulating ideas than the possibility that English might not be your first language. Although it is palpable from your post that you do not intend to defame someone, reading it raises some concern that you might inadvertently convey a defamatory falsehood when you talk about matters which are understandably sensitive. Knowing how to transmit your message clearly and accurately is far more important --and safer from a legal standpoint-- than avoiding ironic acronyms such as &quot;A m o m f&quot;.