Cases are handled differently when law enforcement is not
involved and you are suing your cyberbully in civil court. Private legal counsel is usually retained to bring a lawsuit and
moves for expedited discovery. That means the lawyer asks the judge to permit
her to subpoena the IP records from the ISP before the complaint is even served
in many cases. They often do not know the identity of the cyberbully when the
action is brought and won’t until discovery is complete. The lawsuit typically
alleges defamation or harassment and is brought against John or Jane Does. Once
the defendant is identified in the discovery process, the complaint is amended
to include the real defendant.
A
majority of the bigger ISPs may or may not notify the subscriber of the receipt
of a civil subpoena. (Recently, in response to lawsuits, some courts have
demanded that the subscriber be notified and have an opportunity to contest the
disclosure of their identity before the ISP is permitted to turn over that
information. Some ISPs even promise their subscribers that, in the case of a
civil case, they will receive notice before their information is turned over.)
Once
the information including the IP address and the subscriber information is
received by either the police or private counsel, it may be enough. If the
cyberbully is using only one computer, or the IP address traces back to one
particular computer in a network, especially if the user needs to sign in and
sign off, you may not have to prove much else. But in some cases, tracing the
message to a computer isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to trace it to a person
and a file.
