Why the 'skank blogger' ruling is not a good thing

Nobody much likes the idea of Internet trolls who use the shield of cyber-anonymity to write hateful things about people on blogs or in comment sections. It's tempting to drop the hammer on these people in a manner similar to a judge who, last week, ordered Google to identify the author of a defamatory blog called Skanks in NYC.

But sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. This is one of those instances.

The story of Liskula Cohen and Rosemary Port has gotten a lot of attention over the past week -- probably more than it deserves. Cohen is a former model; Port is a younger acquaintance and fellow fashionista who named Cohen the "#1 Skanky Superstar" and called her "a whore," among other things, on an anonymous Google-enabled blog.