On Monday, 16 August 2010, Carla Franklin filed a lawful appeal in which she wants to force YouTube, owned by Google, to provide her with the identity of a cyber cipher who posted unauthorized videos of her on the online channel. Various derogatory comments were made about her “indie film” which caused Franklin “personal humiliation” according to her attorney, David Fish. Although Franklin isn’t suing Google, she is demanding that her taunter’s actual identity, i.e. name, address and phone number, be disclosed to her.

In a recent interview on CBS News, Franklin stated that Google has thus far been very communicative towards her and that the only reason she filed this case was because of an ongoing harassment situation where she has been stalked offline for over 4 years. In order to get a restraining order though it is required that all the connections be made between the person’s harassing behaviour both online and offline.

Thus far Google has not been accepting any interviews from the media, neither have they made any comments with regards to the Franklin case. They did however issue a response via a spokesperson stating the following: “When we receive a subpoena or court order, we check to see if it meets both the letter and spirit of the law before complying… Google has a track record of advocating on behalf of its users.”

Only last week Google had to deal with a similar case when Liskula Cohen requested that a blogger’s name be made public. After winning her landmark case in a New York Supreme Court, Google supplied Cohen with the identity of the blogger. A media frenzy erupted around Rosemary Port’s blog “Skanks in NYC”, which angered the former model. According to Port her right of privacy has been violated and as a result she is now suing Google for $15million.

As the Franklin case continues it would be interesting to see what effects this case is going to have within the online world. For one thing a High Court ruling was made in June in the United Kingdom stating that bloggers do not have the right to keep their identities secret anymore. In South Africa, well its citizens enjoy the freedom of expression…but only to an extent.