While it is no new news that internet users often can find book reviews posted by other readers online before purchasing a book, it seems rather shocking that book reviews can be used as a tactic by writers to attack other writers in the same genre.
A British author, Rachel Polonsky, discovered that there is a blatantly negative review on her new book “Molotov’s Magic Tavern” on Amazon online bookstore by a commenter named “Historian”. After tracing the same commenter’s comments on other books in the same genre, Polonsky found that this anonymous reviewer had posted other similar, savaging comments to books by other authors. Interestingly enough, she also discovered that this hypercritical “Historian” is unusually laudable to the works by one writer: Orlando Figes.
The writers than started talking to each other and suspected that Figes is himself the true identity behind the obnoxious commentator. This had Figes hiring an attorney threatening to sue Polonsky and others for libel. The events prompted Polonsky to hire an expert in digital forensics, who eventually concluded that the comments did in fact come from Figes’ household.
Online trashing of other people may assume anonymity, but sometimes they are not without real-life consequences. The filing of eLibel lawsuits has a trend of increasing, but oftentimes the court refuses to pursue a complete disclosure of the identity of the anonymous users who made online defamatory comments, making the plaintiff difficult to sue.
Nevertheless, things as subjective as a book review are really a matter of opinion. But when the real world crosses over to the online world, can online comments remain entirely anonymous?
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