In Doe v. X Corp., decided Monday by Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim (N.D. Cal.), plaintiff—who operates the account @Midnight_Tokyo, which has >50K followers—had asked an American court for an order that would require Twitter
to identify a wrongdoer operating certain Twitter Accounts '@suan_news' and '@suan_team' … who engaged in privacy invasion under Japanese tort law. The privacy invasion occurred by disclosure of direct messages on Twitter and of the information which could be taken to be Applicant's real name and Applicant's specific attributes such as the Applicant's occupation….
In this case, the wrongdoer, by creating an open chat, encouraged and enticed Twitter users and readers of the articles to identify who is the operator of the Applicant's Account. As a result of the conduct, more than 1000 people joined the open chat eagerly seeking and providing information to identify Applicant as the operator of the Twitter Account.
The goal of the order is to use the defendants' identities in a Japanese court proceeding.
