Former model Liskula Cohen fought back against an anonymous blogger - and won. Photo / Supplied

Former model Liskula Cohen fought back against an anonymous blogger - and won. Photo / Supplied

The internet is seen as an 'anything goes' medium. But one woman went to court over a blog that was defaming her - and won.

Fashion models' after-lives can take them to unexpected places, as Liskula Cohen found out. She made headlines in August after she sued Google for the email address of an anonymous author who slagged her off as "#1 skanky superstar" and "a psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank" on a Google-hosted blog.

By ruling in the 37-year-old Cohen's favour, Manhattan federal justices have set new guidelines: no longer will bloggers be able to lob insults from the safety of assured anonymity.

The unmasked blogger turned out to be a faint acquaintance from the Manhattan nightlife scene - namely 29-year-old Rosemary Port, a fashion student who had created the Skanks in NYC site. Though she apologised, Port until recently maintained her privacy was violated and threatened a US$15m counter-suit against Google for giving her up.

The case has helped to clarify which terms of insult are libellous, such as "ho", which are merely wounding, like "skank", and along the way offered New York tabloids front-page news of two attractive women in cat fight.

"Secret Grudge of NY Skankies" blazed the New York Post.

While it's tempting to view the case as a girlfight that spilled out of a nightclub and into a courtroom, it's illuminated genuine privacy issues and given Cohen, a Vogue model, a voice fashion alone never offered.

She's joined a growing chorus of commentators who say the internet, or specifically blogs, are an increasingly unreliable place to find information and used for cyberbullying.

But the justice presiding in the case rejected the blogger's defence claim that individuals cannot be libelled online because blogs "serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting", and should not be treated as factual assertions. The court sided with Cohen, citing defamation "concerning her appearance, hygiene and sexual conduct".

Last month, in her new role as cyberbullying spokesperson, Cohen participated in a panel at the University of Tennessee on internet privacy that featured John Seigenthaler, the journalist and former Robert Kennedy aide who was subject to a false Wikipedia entry claiming he was a suspect in the assassination of John F Kennedy, a representative from AP and a bloggers' rights advocate.

In the increasingly busy area of internet rights, cyber policy pundits fret that censorship efforts, privacy mandates and regulations threaten the original cyberspace "presumption of liberty".