Model Sues Google

Liskula Cohen wants to know who called her a "psychotic, lying, whoring, still going to clubs at her age, skank." And she's suing Google to find out.

Back in August, someone who really, really doesn't like Cohen posted pictures of the fashion model in a variety of, shall we say, convoluted poses on a blog named "Skanks in NYC," which appears to be dedicated entirely to her. Cohen, who has appeared on the covers of W and Australian Vogue, didn't care for that at all, and she demanded to know who set up the blog. But Google, which provided the blogging software, doesn't reveal the names of anonymous bloggers as a matter of policy, no matter how nasty they might be. So Cohen has filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in an effort to force Google to reveal the blogger so she can file a defamation suit against the anonymous name-caller.

Of course, news of this lawsuit, the latest chapter in the country's attempt to figure out how to deal with privacy issues and cyberbullying, has drawn more traffic to the blog than ever. In fact, as CNet's Caroline McCarthy reports, searches for Cohen and "Skanks in NYC" have become among the most popular terms in Google Trends. "[C]onsidering that I'd never heard of Liskula Cohen before, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one, this might've been the best thing that ever happened to her," McCarthy writes. Well, we're not so sure about that. But her lawyer must have warned her that once she filed the suit, she would take her place as the pop culture trivia item of the day. So she surely went into this with her eyes open. Meanwhile, a Google representative said that the company sympathized with her plight but wouldn't reveal the name of the blogger unless it was forced to.