A California lawyer has filed a potential class action lawsuit against the internet search company Yahoo.

Stephen Galton says he was subject to a “barrage of harassing, defamatory and abusive messages” from anonymous users on a Yahoo message board.

Let’s see – is this guy nuts for attempting to take on trolls and actually sue them, rather than threatening to do so as so many have done before? Being threatened with cartooneys is one of the Internet’s oldest jokes; next oldest is claiming to be one. In this case, it happens to be true. Or is he crazy like a fox? Because if so, it could potentially threaten Internet discourse as we know it, which may be why it’s big news.

If he succeeds in getting his case declared a class action suit, everybody that ever got smacked around on Usenet or message boards or mailing lists or in blog comments in the last 4 years may decide to climb aboard the train. I don’t think this would actually happen, but I can imagine the chaos that would result if everybody in every ongoing discussion decided to hash out the pros and cons of this issue. Because it’s been done to death, frankly, and it pops up every time someone gets offended or hurt. Potentially: a lot more dead ponies being enthusiastically thrashed to death again. Meanwhile, this suit seems to me to be a very real threat to the concepts of free speech, freedom of thought, and anonymity on the Internet.

Slashdot notes that all the message boards posts relating to the story have supposedly been deleted, but it’s hard to tell based on the link given. The follow-on thread is pretty amusing reading – posts with a higher score for insightfulness or humor are highlighted.

The “abuse” cited by attorney Galton is probably typical Internet/Usenet interpersonal flaming; not particularly unusual or original. However irritating or frightening it is to be flamed in this way, most Netizens learn to deal with it, because 90-99% of the time, it’s just diarrhea of the keyboard. It will never be translated into actual physical contact or financial harm; in fact most online flame jockeys are emboldened by the anonymity of the Net, and fade away quickly if exposed to the light of reality.

Here’s the real problem I have with someone going to court and attempting to sue an ISP over this issue in order to go after people by name:

Anonymity protects a lot of people all over the world; going after a few abusive jerks with class action suits is a non-productive and dangerous idea. First, it may tend to infringe on everyone’s right to free speech (and in some countries, the Internet is the only place where this right can be exercised). Second, it puts anonymity at risk; ISPs are only too willing to roll over and cough up personal information as it is. And again, anonymity ought to be a right, since it protects people in certain countries (such as China or Iran) from harm or government sanction for expressing “wrong” opinions and having “wrong” thoughts.

I hope this case gets thrown out. In the meantime, the Slashdot folks are having a good time documenting posts on the Yahoo board in question that they think will be deleted by the Yahoo admins for being too inflammatory or prejudicial.