Over the last few weeks I've spent probably too much time thinking and writing about the Liskula Cohen libel case ("Skanks for nothing: Google must identify 'anonymous' blogger" and "A skank discussion: Privacy, anonymity, and misogyny.")

Mostly because a) it's a lot of fun, and b) it concerns one of my favorite topics, the always lively Internet Anonymity vs. Privacy vs. Personal Responsibility debate. Besides, how often does an IT blogger get to write about catty supermodels, skanky or otherwise?

[ Also on InfoWorld: "A skank discussion: Privacy, anonymity, and misogyny" | Stay up to date on Robert X. Cringely's musings and observations with InfoWorld's Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]

Today I'm hitting that topic again, but from the opposite direction.

Despite what some tenacious commenters may have thought, I was not defending the right of the now-not-so-anonymous blogger (better known as 29-year-old Rosemary Port) to anonymously defame. Otherwise, the Internet would be one big slanderfest (or, at least, more of a slanderfest than it already is). There needs to be some disincentive for completely juvenile behavior.

But today brings news of a case where anonymity on the Net absolutely needs to be protected. It too involves a court subpoena ordering Google to turn over private information; in this case, the names of the owners of tcijournal@gmail.com, the e-mail address for The TCI Journal, a muckracking news site based in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

Apparently, people in T&C don't spend all their time listening to Jimmy Buffet, eating conch, and drinking mojitos out of hollowed-out pineapples with little umbrellas stuck in them. They also spend time exposing people who allegedly bribe government officials.

Attorneys for one of the alleged bribers, developer Dr. Cem Kinay, are now suing The TCI Journal in California in what some are calling a case of "libel tourism." (Not to be confused with a defamation vacation.) In other words, the developer in T&C chose to sue in a California court because U.S. courts make it easier to demand a company's records.