Last year, the website Extortion Letter Info (ELI) was slapped with an extraordinary "gag order" forcing it to remove more than 2,000 posts related to Linda Ellis, a writer who has a long record of sending copyright demand letters over "The Dash," a poem Ellis claims she composed in 1996.

The broad order got the attention of other activists—bloggers like the author of Fight Copyright Trolls, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which called the Georgia order "overbroad and dangerous."

Now it looks like a Georgia appeals court has recognized that the 2,000-post takedown is actually a big deal.

After initially refusing to hear the case, the state's highest court reversed course in an order last week. The justices stated that the case "raised significant and novel constitutional issues addressing the interplay of the First Amendment and the wide dissemination of information made possible by the Internet."

"I am gratified that the Court of Appeals agreed with us that the issues raised in my appeal needed to be reviewed by the Georgia Supreme Court," said Matthew Chan, the owner of the ELI website, in a press release about his case. "The scope and potential impact of the outcome of this case goes far beyond me and the ELI website. It goes to all website owners and forum administrators in Georgia and possibly outside the state."

Critic of “trolls” admits: “I made some stupid posts”

"The Dash" is a maudlin poem about making the most out of life—the "dash" between one's birth date and death date. It includes stanzas such as:

For it matters not, how much we own,

the cars…the house…the cash.

What matters is how we live and love

and how we spend our dash.

When "The Dash" is reproduced in writing, Ellis has often responded with a demand letter, making copyright infringement accusations and insisting on a $7,500 payment. Ellis has sent such letters to schools, bloggers, and churches. One of Ellis' early targets, charity auctioneer April Brown, has an entire section of her blog that she calls "Beware Don't Share," warning readers about Ellis' technique of searching for her own poem and then making big cash demands.

Chan originally created the ELI website as a response to aggressive copyright enforcement by Getty Images. Since then, it's become one of a few blogs that track a variety of widespread copyright enforcements, campaigns that are sometimes derided as "copyright trolls." Chan started writing about Ellis' copyright demand letters in 2012, soon becoming one of her most vocal critics.

In October, Ellis asked a Superior Court in Georgia for a restraining order against Chan, claiming that some of his posts about her constituted threats. The judge granted a sweeping order, telling Chan to take down all posts related to Ellis and to refrain from contacting her or coming within 1,000 yards of her (which Chan said he had never done).

The order "required among other things a wholesale removal from ELI of all 2,000 posts by anyone that ever mentioned Ellis, her poem, or her business practices in any way," according to Chan's lawyer.

In an interview with Ars last year, Chan admitted some of his posts about Ellis were "stupid" and "unprofessional," although he denied they were threats.

"I definitely would get some video footage of your house from a safe distance and maybe provide directions to your house," Chan wrote in one post. "Remember, as a self-proclaimed public figure and celebrity author, this would be of public interest. I could be a one-man paparazzi."

In her legal filing, Ellis noted that the ELI website also included phrases like "we are coming after you," which Chan says were written not by him but by commenters on his site.