Professor Sues teacherreview.com Site Operator

CmdrPorno writes "ZDTV's [Cybercrime Section] reports that the fellow who created the teacherreview.com Web site is being sued by one of the professors who claims he was defamed on the site." Oh, my. Someone said something bad about someone else on the Internet? Maybe I should sue Slashdot for every AC that's said something about the quality of my writing. Seriously, take a look at this, although some of the language is questionable.

Comments

ACLU Defends Student

[b1ng0]

ACLU Defends Student Website in Case that Threatens Free Expression on the Internet

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, January 31, 2000

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- In a case with important implications for free speech on the Internet, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern
California has asked a Superior Court to dismiss a lawsuit aimed at shutting down a website that provides student reviews of the teachers at San
Francisco City College.

The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco Superior Court City College by professor Daniel Curzon Brown, who objects to what students had to say about his
teaching.

The ACLU, on behalf of Ryan Lathouwers, the creator of the Teacher Review website, says that the speech is protected under the First Amendment.
Other defendants in the suit, the San Francisco Community College District, which is the governing body of City College, and the Associated Students of
City College, agree.

"The Teacher Review website is a perfect example of how the Internet functions as a unique and valuable information source," said ACLU of Northern
California staff attorney Ann Brick. "If permitted to proceed, this case would sound the death knell for any website or bulletin board allowing members of
the public to exchange opinions."

A City College student himself at the time he created Teacher Review, Lathouwers said he wanted to provide an online resource for students trying to
decide which teachers and courses to select. At the time, there was no systematic way for students to find out just what other students who had taken a
class from any particular instructor had to say about the experience.

The website, with its student-authored reviews, was launched in September 1997. Since that time, more than 5,000 individual reviews of nearly 600 City
College instructors have been posted. The site, which has proved very popular with students, has been visited over 100,000 times.

Curzon Brown, a tenured English professor, was rated on the website as one of the ten worst teachers at City College. Student reviews of Curzon Brown
include comments like "pompous," "the most egotistical extremist there is" and "the worst teacher I have ever had the opportunity of knowing."

"Imagine a liberal arts professor unable to tolerate his students expressing their own opinions, and unwilling to allow students to draw their own
conclusions from what others have to say," said Bernard Burk of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin, who is representing Lathouwers as
a cooperating attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. "Fortunately, the First Amendment prevents people like Professor Curzon Brown from
using lawsuits to silence their critics."

Last October, Curzon Brown filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and all other City College employees "who have been or will be defamed by
the content of Teacher Review." His suit seeks monetary damages, and an injunction prohibiting the posting of "defamatory" reviews on the website and
prohibiting either City College or the Associated Students from linking to Teacher Review.

A hearing is scheduled for March 29th in San Francisco Superior Court.

The case is Curzon-Brown v. San Francisco Community College District. In addition to Burk and Brick, the case is being litigated by Celia P. Van Gorder
and Sean A. Pager of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin, and ACLU of Northern California attorney Margaret Crosby. A copy of the
ACLU's motion is available online at http://www.aclunc.org.

Re:Hmmm, that's interesting

[thogard]

Sounds a Dr Lan whos class I walked out of a
few times...

On his test in C/Unix the question was:
What is the shell in unix called?

The "correct" answer was csh.
The wrong answers include:
/bin/sh sh shell ksh tcsh ...

When I posted part of his test to usenet, I was amazing how no one seemed to know the "correct" answers.

When I appealed the grade (he claimed to have given me a C to be nice but siad I deserved a D) I had included printouts of posts from comp.lang.c. When he asked who these people were, I handed him a white book with a blue C on the front and said "one of them wrote this". His comment was they hadn't reviewd the book and would not consider it to help my case.

The professor used to loose my assignments that were emailed to him. Funny, the sendmail logs showed it getting to his server. Why did he only loose stuff from EE/CE students and not CS students...hmmm.

I think I'll write a letter to UMC asking for my money back. Maybe I should get a lawyer to write it :-)

Libel on the web.

[www.sorehands.com]

The webmaster has immunity from the libel action in this case.

The libel laws are clear. If this person is giving opinion, then it can't be libel. If it is stated as fact, then it may be.

The statment

Hopefully one semester not one single person will sign up for his class. What will he do then? Pick up boys on Polk Street to listen to his inanity?

is clearly not libelous.

Publications on the web should be held to be the same standard as the newspapers.

Inflamatory opions are not libel. Wrong opinios are not libel.

What some companies, such as Mattel , are using the libel laws as a way to quiet dissent or negative publicity.

This guy appears to be trying to do the same.

This is the review, I believe he is suing over.

I have never had a class with this professor, but have heard so much hype about how heinous he is that I had to take a peek at his reviews. My current English 1A teacher (I won't name names) is who first tipped me off about him because I was trying to pick a 1B teacher (luckily I am taking advanced composition instead). In fact, my teacher--a usually gentle and forgiving person--warned our whole class against taking his class. My teacher also pointed out that sometimes Brown sneakily changes his name a little so people won't know that they are signing up for his class, so be careful! My teacher also told us that he/she re-routes his/her walking about campus specifically to not have to run into Brown!! That says a lot right there. I also wanted to add that yes, the A and B reviews are obviously fake as they are all written in exactly the same style (thinly disguised) and say basically the same thing. Thank god for teacher review, which I have heard Brown is trying to shut down. Hopefully one semester not one single person will sign up for his class. What will he do then? Pick up boys on Polk Street to listen to his inanity?

It does not say that he is going to pick up male hustlers on Polk Street. And even if it did, it might be implying that he is picking up this hustlers to listen to his lecture, not to have sex.

I just came back from the a software development conference. Most of the companies had offered free t-shirts (or some other junk) to listen to their lecture. I don't think it's a crime.