Unmasked blogger to sue Google for €10m

A BLOGGER who called a magazine cover model offensive names on a web site says Google failed to protect her right to privacy and plans to sue the internet search company for $15 million (€10.4m).

Rosemary Port said she’s angry that Google unmasked her after a Manhattan judge forced the company to reveal her identity.

Google says users agree to a privacy policy that allows the company to share personal information if required by a legal action.

Port was identified as the author of a site on Google’s Blogger.com that had published anonymous remarks about Vogue cover model Liskula Cohen’s hygiene and sexual habits.

Cohen sued to have the blogger identified, arguing that the comments on the site were defamatory.

But Port says that her privacy was violated and she has a right to her opinions.

Liskula Cohen, 36, won the landmark case in a New York court last week, forcing Google to disclose the online identity of Port, 29, a Fashion Institute of Technology student, who created her “Skanks in NYC” blog a year ago using Google’s Blogger.com programme.

Cohen claimed that Port had anonymously posted photographs and “defamatory statements concerning her appearance, hygiene and sexual conduct that are malicious and untrue”.

Port told the New York Daily News the model should blame herself for all the publicity.

“This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing. By going to the press, she defamed herself,” Port said.

“Even though people are now taking shots at me on the web, I believe those people have a right to their opinions – and their anonymity,” she told the Daily News.