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School Official Sues Over MySpace Page
SoCal writes, "How much legal liability do parents have for what their kids do online? A lawsuit filed in Texas by a high-school assistant principal may give some answers. Some students she had disciplined set up a fake MySpace page in her name depicting her as a lesbian (which she happens not to be). In its coverage, Ars Technica notes that 'What sets this case apart from many other lawsuits filed over the content of blogs is that it doesn't target only the teenagers who created the site. It also argues that the parents were guilty of negligence by failing to supervise their children, and that they bear some of the responsibility for the defaming site.'" The article links the Media Law Resource Center's resource tracking more than 50 cases now in the courts nationwide, in which bloggers have been sued for libel and related claims.
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Its about time that someone puts part of the blame on the parents. Until the kids are 18, the parents are responsible for their actions. I hope the kids parents get sued into the poorhouse. Maybe it will wake up a few parents and take their kids off myspace.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Only in america
RESPECT MY AUTHORITAY!
It's about time. While I don't agree that the courts should be deciding cases on what amounts to a bunch of name-calling... it's good to see the possibility of holding parents accountable for their irresponsability with regards to their children. The government is getting too involved with banning activities for everyone just for the sake of protecting children because their parents refuse to.
I think if parents started being charged with involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide when their kids go on school schooting rampages, you'd see more parents suddenly taking an interest in their children's lives and activities.
Parents need to raise (and control) their children. That is not the role of the government. And it is not the role of the public at large.
But you cannot monitor EVERYTHING your child does. You have to work to keep the child clothed, fed, and sheltered and keep up with home maintenance and other every-day social tasks. It's impossible to keep an eye on a kid ALL of the time. I'm sure these kids are probably over the age of 12, which by then they should probably know right from wrong. I'd say give these kids 120 hours of community service and let them learn from their mistakes. Having their parents "sued into the poor house" seems a little extreme to me.
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
Myspace shouldn't receive any punishment because of things like this. Only the people who abuse the service should be sued/fined/restricted.
I recently learned that something very like this was happening at the school district where I work. Several teachers learned that someone had assumed their identities on MySpace and were posting defamatory remarks. My suggestion was to have the district's lawyer informally contact MySpace asking that the sites be taken down, and follow up with a C&D letter a week letter if they didn't comply.
No word concerning a lawsuit against the student(s) responsible.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
People should get used to the fact that lots of info one gets from the web is fake. So what?
And who cares about MySpace anyhow? A high-school assistant principal doesn't seem to be in the right circle of social relations to be harmed by that page.
If I were in the jury, I would propose a verdict "guilty but harmless, throw away".
Raising kids is hard work (got 2 me'self), and it is **your** work, not the state's or school's work or myspace's work!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Stupid person decides to sue stupid people for a stupid reason. And let's sue the grandparents because afterall, they birthed the negligant parents! Set em' up, knock em' down! Now move along...
I'm not in high school anymore, but I know it would have been impossible for my parents to monitor all of my online activities. I suppose the parents could have set up a filter to block certain sites, such as myspace, and while that may inconvenience the students, they would most likely find other means to let out their frustration, such as spray paint on the teacher's car.
Personally, I think what they did is about on par with yelling at somebody in a crowded room. It may hurt your feelings, but is anybody going to pay attention to it, and even if they do pay attention, how long are they going to remember it? Bringing a lawsuit will make even more people know about the incident, and assumedly, the teacher wants as few people to know that she had students calling her a lesbian, when she is in fact not.
The law's pretty clear on this one. Parents are 100% responsible for their minor children's actions, online or in meatspace.
Myspace isnt the only portal suffering from issues. Orkut, Facebook etc are among many other social forums which have become a bit more freedom and some people have taken well advantage of it. The fault lies in the way education system today as these websites will not change.
Someone attaining the position of assistant principal should have the intelligence to confront the problem themselves. Seems like all school administrators these days are requiring the LAW to teach students. Education used to be about learning and it doesn't appear this principal is demonstrating the ability to learn herself.
These kids, for whatever reason, posted information that they knew to be wrong to hurt the teacher. This sounds like libel to me. Does it really matter why they put up the information?
Crow T. Trollbot
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I'm up in the air about making it the parents' fault.
On the other hand, I strongly disagree with the idea that "Allowing access to the Internet, unsupervised and without restraint poses an obvious and unreasonable danger that such children would utilize the Internet for illicit purposes"
Claiming negligent supervision over the kids' use of the internet.... that creates an incredibly high burden for any parent. Unless the kids have done this before, I can't imagine that the "obvious and unreasonable danger" charge is going to hold up.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I've seen a number of news stories over the years where parents had a rude awakening when their out of control teens did something really bad and they ended up on the other side of a lawsuit.
The end result seems that common law holds, by precedent, that parents have a legal duty to teach their children right from wrong. Unless it can be proved, by reason of obvious mental defect, that the child is incapable of learning this, then why not hold the parent liable when the kid does something bad enough to warrant criminal or civil proceedings?
Kids will be kids, to be sure, and there's only so much you can do. But the bar of "only so much" is one it seems many parents fail to clear. Wrapped up in their own issues, they don't stop and say: "I'm responsible for this kid and I need to put a few of my needs on hold so I can make sure this kid turns out okay."
The negligence that caused these kids to end up doing what they did was not recent, but systematic. I hope the principal wins a significant judgement, it holds up on appeal, and that the kids spend the rest of their lives being reminded how their own selfishness (likely learned from their parents) ruined the lives of their families.
- G
Start a happiness pandemic
Seriously, I've always wondered how someone can do it. The RIAA, this assistant principal...anyone.
How do they know, beyond a resonable doubt, who did it?
Seems like in this case you'd need logs from Myspace on what user and IP address did the deed. Then, you'd need logs from the ISP to match the IP to the account. Then, you'd need to prove which computer had that IP. And then, you'd need to prove who was actually on it at the time. And finally, wouldn't you have to prove that the box wasn't hacked/owned by someone else at the time?
It seems like you'd always have a reasonable doubt defense. "Your Honor, granted the attack came from my machine, but it wasn't me. I found a Zotob worm on my machine, and this person at high school who doesn't like me is always in the computer lab..."
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
All children need to undergo the Ludovico technique. Then we won't have to worry about giving people a choice to be moral--they can just be moral machines. Excellent...
who thinks this is dangerous? I mean, didn't we see the news of someone who got convicted for posting negative comments online? Where does the line stop? Next thing you know, any type of negative opinion can be sued and we all know ALL of us are gonna get in trouble for the stuff we crap out on /.
It's rare when such an expression actually fits a situation. Usually, when someone says something like that, it doesn't make complete logical sense to me.
I, like so many others, would like to see parents being held accountable for many things such as the health and well-being of their children, and yes, their behavior as well. I have some issue with the reasons in this case, however.
Is it Libel to fraudulantly claim to be someone else and then claim things that are untrue? In many cases, examples of this sort of thing are found in comedy and other materials as a form of satire. Satire is generally targetted at public figures, but in their circles, an assistant principal is a very public figure. And making absurd or outrageous claims is all part of this thing we call freedom of expression in these United States.
If they were acting as themselves and reporting that they have evidence that what they claimed about their assistant pricipal was correct as stated, that might indeed be considered libel. But in this case, I would have to consider a MySpace blog posted in the first-person would have to beconsidered as nothing short of satire since it can be easily shown that the origins of the content were not truthful and therefore the whole set of contents were suspect. Under no reasonable circumstance could the content have been considered or mistaken as factual and therefore could only be construed as an artistic expression... a very First Amendment activity.
I think before parents should even be considered as partially responsible, let's first determine if there's an actual crime. I doubt this should be considered a crime in this case.
I very much hope that this woman wins this case. Here's why.
1) The teens in question were committing libel
Seems correct, according to most legal libel definitions I've read. The statements about her being a lesbian were, as far as the article says, false and damaging. As those are the main criteria, libel has been committed.
2) The assistant principal is suing both the teens and their parents
I like this part in particular. For all the "OMG violent games make kids kill" cases that ignore parental involvment (or lack thereof), here's one that puts some responsibility on both parties. The teens are responsible directly for creating the fake MySpace, and the parents are responsible for what their children do. Note: this does NOT mean that parents should monitor all of their children's activity online. It means that, as you have raised the child a certain way, you are responsible for how they act based on that upbringing until they are 18.
If you raise your children well, they (hopefully) won't be foolish enough to do things like commit libel on the Internet. I add the hopefully because, well, kids are willful and resourceful. Hence why both the parents and teens are being sued.
USE colorful confetti ON heavily-armed clown
I, for one, am surprised that MySpace hasn't raised the maturity level of those that use it.
Internet! What has happened to you?? You had such promise...
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Maybe I should go to a public library or my office, post something inflammatory, and hope they get sued. Seriously, if these kids posted from a library (not outside of possibility), would she sue the library? At that age kids are too independent minded to say the parents are liable. Besides, this case is about libel and defamation. I have two kids. Thinking back as a teen and the shit I said, I hope I'm not held responsible for everything that comes out of their mouth when they are teenagers.
For all of the people thinking the government cannot impose fines or sentences on parents based on acts the children are responsible for, keep in mind that many truancy laws hold parents accountable for the child's absence from school up until the point the child has turned 18 years of age and is no longer a minor. Sure, it's a little different but the point is that parents are held legally accountable for their child's actions in some cases. It will be up to a court of law to decide if this is one of those specific cases.
On the one hand the government is continually taking more and more control away from parents (for example, if a young girl wants an abortion she can get one without having to obtain parental permission; children are routinely taken away from "unfit" parents; parents are not allowed to prevent their children from being exposed to school material they find objectionable). Then on the other hand we want to blame parents for their kids' actions. There is no denying that there has been a steady erosion of parental rights in the past few decades. You can't have it both ways. If it takes a village to raise a child, then it is the village that is responsible when that child commits a crime, not the parents who's authority has been, in many cases, usurped.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
1. Sharing is bad: Intro to Copyright Law
2. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but libel makes me call my lawyer
3. Sit down and shut up: Intro to Democracy
4. Why did those mean men take mommy away? Homeland Security for kids
The Asst Principal should be fired right now, for setting such a bad example. What ever happened to "Sticks and stones...". She is a grown adult. At no time is she in any danger by this myspace page, and any judge will recognize that. It's all completely harmless. At no time is she at risk for a financial loss by the page, and she won't be in the future. Nobody can prove any harm was done whatsoever. Sure, some bloggers are committing libel, but that's not the same as calling somebody a lesbian. However by seeking to retaliate against the students, she is displaying a very poor moral character and bad judgement. I would pull my kids out of the school immediately (whether they have anything to do with this or not), and/or go to the superintendant and complain.
Litigation for this is a flaming waste of time and tax-payer monies! The assistant principal should just blow it off instead she is litigious... that is just so... gay!
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
if you really view myspace as a "service" then you obviously don't understand the point of the post you replied to.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
What if a kid managed to do this entirely from, say, a public library? Or from school itself? In the latter case, the parent probably isn't even _permitted to try_ and find out what their child has been doing on the school's computers, and in the former case it's logistically impossible if you don't want to be following the kid everywhere. Does anyone have some insight into what a parent would do in this case?
Seriously, McGinnis, Lochridge & Kilgore is a very big and very, very expensive firm. I doubt they're taking this suit on a contingent fee unless the kids come from some major legal money. Maybe the plaintiff just has mid five figures to burn through in a few months and wants to make a point (but I doubt that). So who's paying the legal fees right now? I'm thinking of a group that's mostly likely: white, christian and has a general intolerance for anyone or thing different (like the CCA or the FRC). Sorry, but it is Texas and this is America.
Answer this and we'll understand more about the goal of the suit.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
So, on one hand schools teach that information from blogs and personal web pages is trivial and can't be trusted, and on the other hand the information is so important that it can ruin a person's life.
By suing someone for defamation of character over a personal web page, this person is legitimising the information on personal web sites. If she wins, MySpace and other sites like it will be even more legitimate.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
I've seen things like this happen before, though under slightly different circumstances.
A few years back, there was a local 8th grader who ran a simple personal web page... not myspace, but one of those "AIM sub-profile" things. He used it primarily to rant, often about classmates, and eventually the school administration caught wind of it. They called it harassment, and ordered him to take the site down or face suspension. Supposedly, he was also facing a lawsuit from the parents of one of someone he had slammed on the webpage.
I found this to be quite alarming, because I was under the impression that a school should not have any jurisdiction over the internet, outside of their own webspace. Not that I was surprised (middle schools are evil, after all), but in my eyes the school administrations was going over the line, by a lot. The internet should not be used as a(nother) tool for teachers and administrators to control students' lives outside of the classroom. It's not their place. I pay taxes for students to be educated, not to pay school staff to settle petty disputes between children.
He graduated from junior high a couple months later and put his site back up. Go him.
As looks on the surface, the teens are guilty of libel and identity theft. I am afraid the parents bear some responsibility for their actions. I don't believe so much that parents have to exert absolute authoritarian control of their kids but they are responsible to instill in them a sense of morality and to treat their fellow man with some decency. The administrator is a human being and to be harrassed for doing nothing else but her job is inexcusible.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
If the children describe their teacher as a %(*#^@! on a piece of paper and make photocopies for possible viewing by lots of others, should we blame whover made the paper, whoever delivered the paper, the tree pulp, the copy machine, etc.? If the paper is a webpage, should we blame the site's registered owner, the webhost, the ISPs, all the hops between the server and anyone who can access the page, whoever provided the PC's? Suing MySpace for kids pages containing claims of dubious veracity, defamation, libel, etc., reminds me of the idiots who waste resources suing gun manufacturers.
I would have to agree with the plaintiff. Otherwise, minors under the legal age would be able to run rampant with bogus and defamatory statements on just about anything. A simple example might be convincing a minor to post derogatory statements about some company's quarterly financial report to scare away investors. The minor would get a slap on the wrist, while the company's losses could amount in the millions.
Being a minor does not automatically exclude from one's responsibilities in society. Parents, while not fully responsible for a child's behavior, should bear some of the brunt if the child decides to rape, mame, kill, steal, defame another, or any other similar, punishable crime of severity. Parents' ought to be responsible for raising their children proper, and not depend on society, the TV or video games to do it for them.
It's a free community allowing people to pretty much advertise theirself in a sense. They can upload a small biography, their pictures, and now their video. It's a community/network of people. It in my opinion is a service. If people misuse the 'service' by posing as people they are not then it is the person(s) who are at fault for illegal conduct, not the site. The content posted by the students is indeed degrading and deserve to be punished.
They are to a preponderance of the evidence, which basically means whoever has the stronger case. One of the things that can, and will, be considered is who would do such a thing. The likelihood of J. Random Hacker breaking into a kid's computer and using to to make a Myspace page about the kid's principal is highly unlikely. The same kid doing it is much more likely, especially given that these particular students were ones that had a run in with her.
Also, I'm willing to bet she knows it was them because they are retards like most teenagers and bragged to their friends. That is something that would be admissible.
The only ones being sued are the kids and their parents (as far as the article says). The expected "sue anyone within 10 feet of anyone who has anything to do with this" reaction is notably absent.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
That is what happened in my district, but the kids deleted the pages before any legal action was taken.
If I had done something like this when I was a teenager (granted, back before the Internet was really used outside of academic/research organizations), I could be damn sure that a call from the affected party to my dad would have brought down a world of discipline. No, my dad didn't rule with an iron fist, but if he had found out I did something like this, I would only be using the computer in the middle of the dining room from 5:30 to 6:30 to write school reports. Granted, I could go elsewhere, but home use would be severely restricted. I would have also made numerous, in-person public apologies.
I wonder, therefore, if the parents were given a chance to discipline their children. Sadly, this comes down to a sue-at-the-drop-of-a-hat vs. a my-child-can-do-no-wrong situation.
That said, if the parents refused to act, I hope the parents understand that everything on line lasts forever, somewhere. One day, Ben Schreiber and Ryan Todd are going to have their names googled while applying for a job, pursuing a potential mate, running for office, etc. A smart parent should understand the ramifications of these actions where a teenager can't.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
DONT marry - if/when you divorce your spouse (generally female one) might take half of all your earnings in future if s/he decides s/he doesnt want to work.
DONT make kids - you will get into a phletora of legal liabilities, lots of stupid or wise government officials will mess with you, and you wont be able to slap your kid if s/he climbs over your shoulder and decides s/he wants to shit on your head even if you tell her/him this is something wrong a million times.
Read radical news here
Right over yer head smartypants.
And aparently a bunch of moderators too. LOL. Idiots.
Is this libel? Sounds like it. I haven't seen it, didn't find a link, but from the description we've got untruth in writing or broadcast, tending to bring the target into ridicule/hatred, etc., all that.
Is it still libel on the Internet? The Internet makes it much easier to publish stuff for a wide audience, but you're still doing that, however easy it may be.
Are parents responsible for the acts of their children? Yes. In civil cases, and in many criminal cases, the parents can be held responsible.
Is this going to bring a "chilling effect"? I think the only thing it's going to chill is people publishing hurtful lies about other people online. I have no problem with that. The only thing new here is that minors have greater access to the eyeballs of the public at large than they did before.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Clark High School - 210-397-5150
Press 1
Press 6 for Administration
Leave Anna Draker a message detailing just how much she appears to be whining. Written from "her POV" is what I see on the myspace site, and that's known as "satire," protected under the First Amendment. We do this everyday in television shows, depicting people as something they are not, and the shows may get sued but almost always will they come out victorious.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You are over-reacting. Nobody is even remotely suggesting that children require 24/7 oversight.
Oversight is required for children. They do not yet know the rules for society, and the people that they spend the vast majority of their time with (namely, parents) are the best examples and role models that they're likely to get.
Your suggestion of 24/7 oversight seems to suggest that the children could put a fake MySpace site together in a split second, and that is not the case. The fact that they clearly didn't see anything wrong enough with the situation to stop is an indication of failure on the parents' part. Thus, the responsibility is theirs.
If you don't think this is fair, then my advice is that you not have children.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
I think too many people are downplaying the consiquences of having a fake myspace page in your name.
Myspace has become a common tool used by employers to seek out more information about their potential hires. If someone makes a fake page about you, portraying you as a satanist or druggy, or some other socially undesirable label then that could effect whether you get a job or not.
Aside from this it could put your existing job in jeopardy. What if the kids had made this page out to look like the teacher was a sexual predator, preying on her underaged students, and even go so far as to make fake blogs depicting sexual encounters with her students.
If the student's intent was malicious and not just to be funny, they could easily put the teacher's job in a situation for review. A student shows his parents the myspace page, the parent notifies otehr parents, brings it up to the pta, to the school board. All of a sudden this teacher is on a suspension until an investigation is complete as to whether or not this teacher is actually a sexual predator. This is the good-case scenario, worst case of course is that the teacher cannot prove her innocence and all this fake evidence is enough to get the teacher fired and even listed as a sex offender, being pubicly humiliated.
I can only imagine how difficult and lengthy the process is to get a fraudulent page removed from myspace unless it specifically violated several myspace rules.
Didn't your mother teach you not to post as AC? It's ruuuuude.
Its about time that someone puts part of the blame on the parents.
Fine and dandy...if that is the case then IT IS ABOUT TIME THAT SOMEONE PUTS PART OF THE BLAME ON TEACHERS too. Computer access at public schools is still horribly unsupervised, and it is probably at least as likely (and probably more so) that students could use school resources, during ther breaks between classes, to do commit exactly the same libel as happened here. I haven't heard anything about schools being sued for neglecting to adequately supervise students whilst they are in the care of teachers..either it doesn't happen or it isn't reported in the news. It has happened numerous times where websites with threatening statements or plots to pull another Columbine, and these were done using school resources. The students are swiftly disciplined (suspended or expelled and even at times charged with criminal offences) but I've not heard parent of these kids trying to go after teachers or schools for the woeful lack of supervision or effective preventative actions.
I do agree tha too many parents have neglected to be properly involved in their children's lives and it has had a profoundly negative impact on our children's development. Somewhere we all lost our way and got caught up in buying nice big houses and SUVs and struggling to make the payments with two incomes and overtime--as if having large houses and SUVs would make us happy and our kids more well adjusted. HOWEVER, this is NOT the only main problem with how our children are raised.
The other problem is our education system, and the methods and practices taught to our teachers for educating our children. It is at least as important as proper parental involvement in children's lives. Besides teachers being overworked and underpaid so as to make proper supervision and discipline next to impossible, new teachers are also badly trained. Too much teacher training is spent on theroetical child psychology and educational methodology courses...and it seems the content of those courses is based on unproven ideas and shaky research. Young idealistic teachers all too often come out of college with their heads filled with phychological garbage about "child centered environments" and "preserving self esteem" at the cost of real methods to teach children how to learn, think critically, be civically responsible and so on. Thus, when a student fails to perform his or her academic responsibilities it is viewed not as a failure on the students part but a "lack of self esteem". Instead of making the student accept responsibility for the failure and learn from the mistakes these teachers try to improve the child's self esteem.
What total crap! This is the prefect recipe for creating a society of sociopaths! If there is any element in a childs like that aggravates his mental stability such conditioning helps breed serial killers. The kids who put out libelous or threatening web pages, or shoot up schools, or bully outcasts to the point of nervous breakdown are dangerously sociopathic. Parental neglect did NOT cause this to happen in isolation. Parental neglect is what allowed the education system to make these children into sociopaths.
If you are a teacher, please try not to take offence..it is not the teachers fault, and in fact I'd say 10 to 20 percent of teachers are superhumanly effective educators. Similarly 10 to 20 percent of teachers are almost criminally incompetent. The remaining 60 to 80 percent deliver mediocre results--their students may come out knowing enough to contribute to society but these teachers (through no fault of their own--they are victims of the system too) do not have the ability to correct institutional damage done to many of these kids.
So if it takes being litigious to correct the behaviour of adults responsible for our children it cannot stop with the parents...teachers (or the professors who educate teachers, or the administration that run the schools) have to be targeted as well. I think that the teacher might want to direct some of the blame to her bosses as well for fostering an intimidating environment that does not allow the opportunity to properly discipline students.
"The content posted by the students is indeed degrading and deserve to be punished."
this i fully agree with you on..
but my space as far as i am concerned is not a service..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
But surely a lawsuit will clear all this up, and soundly prove that the princapal is not a lesbian.
Having been on the receiving end of similar incidents involving students at my school (I teach Algebra in a Jr. High), I have found MySpace to be very quick to delete profiles that are fraudulent or defamatory when they are notified. They are even quicker when you say that the students involved are likely to be under that magic COPA age of 13. Being a US company, they take the federal online statutes quite seriously. Had the pages in question been truly harmful, I would have taken further action of finding out which students were involved, contacting their parents, and pursuing further avenues as needed. There have been other students in my district that have been suspended, transferred, or outright expelled for things they have posted on MySpace. Hazing, bullying, and libel can very much extend into the digital realm and have repercussions in the offline world. Young and old need to be aware of that and treat it the same as they would someone making harassing phone calls, passing out flyers in a neighborhood, or taking out an ad in a newspaper.
I'm glad MySpace is not getting sued in this one. I didn't RTFA, but I have to wonder if the Vice Principal tried to resolve this with the parents before escalating it to a civil case. It is quite possible that she did and got a response along the lines of, "kids will be kids," or worse yet, "it couldn't be my child, you have no proof, I'm not going to do anything, I'm not listening, la-la-la-la-la-la-la."
Ok, enough rambling. Time to sleep.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
Since when is being a lesbian a bad thing?
Isn't it extremly degrading to gays to say that being called one is a great defamation of character?
Just a small reminder. There are many states that still allow employers to discriminate based off of real or perceived sexual orientation, at least until the ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) passes Congress.
Sure, get the site taken down, and punish the perpetrator. But if you don't know who did it, the last thing that you want to do is stand in front of a group of rebelious teens and make idle threats.
Whoever decided to sue children over a bad joke should be locked away from society themselves. These kids and their parents don't deserve fines or jail time. They should have had their behinds tanned, been grounded for a month or so and have to do some community service. Why does this woman even care if others think she is a lesbian? Being a teacher she should be very used to kids saying untrue and nasty things about her. When I was in high school I was a horrible kid and I don't know how many times I said this teacher or principal was gay or a lesbian. It was the normal insult that most of my friends used. Now that I'm an adult I see how silly using gay or lesbian as an insult. If she acted like an adult and simply told the kid's parents and had the site removed the problem would have been solved without making her look like she has something to hide. Not that anyone should be hiding if they are gay/lesbian, not like their is anything wrong with it. Animals have been doing it for a long time. Those that doubt some animals are gay check this article that ran in Reuter's today. http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?typ e=scienceNews&storyID=2006-10-12T124838Z_01_L12870 614_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENVIRONMENT-HOMOSEXUALITY.xml&WTm odLoc=NewsArt-C2-NextArticle-2
WTF?
Republican Pedophilia
Republican Congressman Mark Foley abruptly resigned from Congress after "sexually explicit" emails surfaced showing him flirting with a 16-year old boy.
+ Republican executive Randall Casseday of the conservative Washington Times newspaper was arrested for soliciting sex from a 13-year old girl on the internet.
+ Republican chairman of the Oregon Christian Coalition Lou Beres confessed to molesting a 13-year old girl.
+ Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd was arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with an 8-year old girl. Floyd has repeatedly won elections for Denton County, Texas, constable.
+ Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.
+ Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.
+ Republican petition drive manager Tom Randall pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 14, one of them the daughter of an associate in the petition business.
+ Republican County Chairman Armando Tebano was arrested for sexually molesting a 14-year-old girl.
+ Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.
+ Republican campaign worker Mark Seidensticker is a convicted child molester.
+ Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.
+ Republican Mayor Tom Adams was arrested for distributing child pornography over the internet.
+ Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.
+ Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
+ Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.
+ Republican Committeeman John R. Curtain was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.
+ Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.
+ Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader and Lutheran church president Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.
+ Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.
+ Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.
+ Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.
+ Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.
+ Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.
+ Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer was sentenced to six years in prison for molesting two 8-year old girls, one of whom appeared in an anti-Gore television commercial.
+ Republican activist Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
+ Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
+ Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
+ Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.
+ Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.
+ Republican campaign chairman Randal
Seriously, someone post the old URL for the myspace page so we can look it up on the Internet Archive.
A good defense the parents could employ would be to suggest that the children created the defaming website during school time while they were under the supervision of the vice principal, thereby implying that she was negligent and contributed to her own lible.
I'm the odd man out in an even number of participants
No kidding. Kids do stupid things all the time, some of which we should be concerned about, some of which are just "kids being kids".
These teens didn't exactly post shocking confessions about how they were abused by this person, and make claims of pedophilia. They claimed she was GAY. Maybe it's just me, but BIG FREAKING DEAL. I think the reactions here reflect more on the posters than on the teens - apparently being gay is such a horrible thing to most Slashdotters that accusations of it amount to libel. Sad, really.
Next, we'll see some 5 year old sued because they called their ex-best friend a "doodie head".
Lighten up, folks. It's a harmless teenage prank. Don't any of you remember being kids? Give the kids some community service. The parents are probably pretty damned embarassed. But a lawsuit against them? You'd think these kids had gone on a shooting rampage.
Yeesh.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Big fuckin babies
When I am not in the room my children aren't allowed to access the internet. I disable access to the internet from their machine whenever I get up to leave the room and only enable it on request for as long as I'm in the room with them. As a parent I feel it's my responsibility to know enough to do this. In this particular case the principal needs to show that the parents did not make a reasonable attempt to limit and/or monitor their childrens access. If they attempted to and their children were able to circumvent them then IMO they have a defense but as a parent you can't simply throw your hands in the air and give up parenting because there is a chance that your children will get around it.
Ah, the slippery slope again. Welcome everyone.
What is sillier and more idiotic than suing parents for not raising their children right, especially when these "kids" are guilty of using nothing more than a computer an an internet connection? Should we sue the parents of high-school kids involved in shootings? What about the parents of serial killers..surely they have to share part of the blame?
New rule: If your kids are old enough to know what a dyke is, and can put up an online profile of a straight woman convincing enough to say that she is one, then by golly they're not kids anymore!
Give me a break. If this was a while back before the "Computer Age" students would do the same thing by spreading rumors to other students or posting some kind of defamed poster about her. If it was in the 40's she would be a "Nazi" in the 60's a "Communist" 70's a "Love Child" 80's "On Cocaine" it goes on and on. The only thing that has changed is the decade we are in and the thinning of one's skin. Is it wrong, yes. But then again it is equally wrong to SUE about it. Why? because all that suing is about is a monitary gain. This is a Vice Principal vs a student the VP should have enough common sense to resolve this issue in a school like manor, suspension or detention. Ask me, she's just in it for the money.
It's the old guns or users of guns argument.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
If we allow people to sue minors AND their parents, alleging that the parents were, in some way, negligent by letting the children do something like this, then we open the door to sue parents of children who commit other crimes, like using or selling drugs, vandalism, etc...
How, as a parent, are we supposed to follow our children during the day and make sure they "do what is right"? At some point, children will become old enough to make their own decisions, and conversely, they should have to pay the consequences for their decisions.
In what way does that make parents liable for their children's actions?
Should we start suing the parents of every criminal, alleging the same thing? If they would not have been negligent in their duty as parents, the criminal wouldn't have become a criminal...
Somehow this smacks of stupidity...
--E--
detentions/suspensions? I've done a few defamatory things in my youth against other classmates and teachers. In the instances that I was caught, I just got a couple days of in-school suspension. That sucked enough that I didn't do it again until I transferred to a new school. This nation's policy of litigate first, ask questions later is really getting out of hand.
In Loco Parentis
Parents are generally held responsible for their children's actions. Be it destruction of property, driving without a license and having an accident, someone getting hurt with a firearm, theft, and so on.
We don't need better firewalls. We don't need some intelligent filter at myspace to catch this stuff.
Hold the parents responsible for what their kids post. Even if I think my 13 year old should drink, and drive, and sell their body on the street, well, shucks, society and the law holds me responsible for their actions till they are 18. So I make sure that they are not drinking, or driving without a license, or prostituting themselves out. After a few parents pay some big fines, well heck, they will want to know what web pages their kids are working on.
This nonesense will all go a way in another generation. When the kids who don't remember what life is like before the internet existed grow up, they will watch their kids. They will not cop out and say they don't understand computers, or that their kids could do that. Life should be interesting once that generation of pirates and scallywags have kids of their own.
vi +
I did the EXACT same thing to my band teacher... i said she was a lesbian, and i said much much more... but i have a dynamic IP adress (dial up)and used a anonymous IP program (forgot the name) so they could not prove it was me even though everyone knew it was me... and now she will probaly read this so i'll post anonymously...
Does this mean I can sue my school after I use cgi-proxy to circumvent their web filters and do one of these and/or look at porn or somethnig???
I don't see how Myspace is responsible. It's the kids that made it who are responsible for this, and are the ones that should be sued. The reason for this is they read and electronically signed an agreement with Myspace prior to creating the page on Myspace. This makes them responsible for what they post and that they won't break copy write and other laws through Myspace's interface.
If there is something legally I'm missing I honestly would like to know.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
Why doesn't the teacher: (a) request the page removed from MySpace by the kids or by reporting it to MySpace (b) bring their parents into school to talk about punishment at home and in school (c) suspend the kids or kick them out of school. Taking legal action seems very extreme, working with kids in the education system requires thick skin.
I personally was in a very similar situation over ten years ago. I was only one of two kids who knew much about computers in highschool but we found ourselves in the hot seat after spoofing our teacher's email address and sending a homosexual message out to the classroom mailing list. Looking back it was a stupid prank but being disciplined woke me up as to how offensive adults viewed the joke. When you're 17 or 18, parents have very little control. I think the teacher is just acting out of anger and trying to get revenge.
Free speech my ass. If some coworker of you wife or your mother posted a Myspace page claiming all kinds of sexually deviant and flase claims you would be outraged. teachers don;t have to just "blow it off", fuck that, techers should be protected from the sick kids that attend public school.
If it was my wife I would sue them and their parents as well. I would also haunt these kids lives until they were 40. Oh that is if I didn't execute them first.
First of all what ever happened to the old rule of "sticks and stones?" Words are just words, and edited pictures are just art, so I can't see how a work of fiction posted on the internet hurts anyone.
I applaud your well thought out, articulate reply.
Well, I would, if your reply didn't amount to "Is not!"...
It's been a long time.
...sues their students for making fun of them? Had this come from someone not charged with educating the child, I might be more accepting. But the teachers have more face to face contact than the parents. Who cares if it happened at home or at school, if the educator hasn't taught them this is wrong, they should share the blame. Why doesn't this woman go sue herself? Pathetic.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I remember a much simpler time, when school administrators called you parents to report that you did something wrong, and allowed the parents the opportunity to discipline their own children. Apparantly, these days such information is delivered via subpoena. The person in question claims many sleepless nights worrying over the content of this fake page. It seems to me that all that useless worry could have been avoided by simply calling the kids and their parents into the office or mediating the dispute in some manner. Obviously the kids are pricks, and probably never even gave a second thought to how this would affect the other person. Given the chance, their parents might have been able to help their children understand why their behaviour was unacceptable. Now, however, there is just likely to be a bad taste in everyone's mouth over this, and the children are far more likely to label the woman in question as a B----.
IANAL... But I play one on
You can explain the rules of society to your children and be a good role model. However your children, despite being minors, are independent agents. They can choose to obey you or not, and in the final analysis you simply cannot force them to comply with your wishes. To that extent, the law recognizes that children are not absolute proxies for their parents. If your child commits murder, you WILL NOT go to prison to pay the child's debt to society. If your child puts up a fake MySpace page, you may bear some negligence, but it's not reasonable that your liability would be exactly the same as if you committed the act yourself.
Besides, the answer here is that in a reasonable court, this AP would only be entitled to minimal damages in any event. Oh, somebody made fun of her. Boo hoo. What does she expect -- she supervises CHILDREN FOR A LIVING. Unless she can prove direct losses, some suspensions and apologies should be enough revenge for her. She wasn't rich before and their prank didn't change the situation, so by no means should she be entitled to get rich off the backs of these children's parents.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
four years ago some stupid girl in my class posted a picture of her kissing another girl.
someone coaxed me into snagging the picture and putting it on a site saying she was a lesbian before she could take it down.
i did this on my own free time after school that day.
it was supposed to be a riot. truth is, for about 15 minutes it was. then it got lame.
well, its existence started to spread. some idiots decided to print it off and post it in the hallway. yeah, that was a grand idea.
so shit hits the fan, and next thing i know i have two classmates bawling over this even though they did this to themselves. (remember, the picture was originally on one of their sites, but it was taken down. i put it back up on another.)
everyone decided to point at me, of course, and so I get called to the office. parents are pissed and are talking to lawyers. I get bitched at for being an unethical nerd, and keeps threatening me to admit i did it and apologize because they're calling lawyers.
I said "prove it."
and that was that. their lawyers supposedly said "i can't prove he did this" and wouldn't do anything for them. Hell they didn't even tell my parents about this.
I think until they have hard evidence, they need to back off on these people.
there are tons of liberal bloggers out there attacking conservatives, some of them even make fake MySpace account profiles for conservatives. What is to stop the conservatives from filing libel lawsuits against the liberal bloggers? I mean there are tons of smear websites and liberal blogs that defame conservatives, well to be honest there are conservative blogs that defame liberals, but liberals are in the majority on the Internet. So all a conservative need do is contact a lawfirm to issue subpeonas to the owners of all liberal blogs that write defaming comments about them. Possibly some of the bloggers will settle out of court and remove the ofending blog entries, others will fight it and exhaust their legal funds. Then after bloggers are targeted, conservatives decide to subpeana newspapers and liberal newspaper editors. It needs a name, and I'll call it the Libel Lottery.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I don't think satire would protect this activity. I don't know the circumstances, but I am pretty sure the teenagers didn't do anything to indicate that the source was anything but the asst principal. That being the case, you can make a strong argument that someone would easily interpret it as authentic, and not humor. This would be easily proven if she is truly being attacked by others who saw the webpage, as she claimed.
I will be surprised if this even actually goes to trial. It sounds like what the kids did was such blatant defamation and identity theft that they really have no valid defense. The parents' liability also seems likely.
Boom Shanka
Legally, this isn't hard. The parents are not being prosecuted--they are being sued for damages by the assistant principal. The assistant principal claims to have suffered sleepless nights and other forms of injury as a result of this defamatory website, and seeks to recover damages from the parents of the kids who have harmed her.
This is called a "tort."
A tort is an injury--here is a link to the Wikipedia page on torts involving negligence. The assistant principal is claiming that the parents were negiligent in supervising their children, and the assistant principal was harmed as a result. She is suing for damages.
A couple of observations:
First--there's a fundamental rule of litigation: it is one thing to bring a lawsuit--depending upon the jurisdiction (and Texas certainly fits this description), your dog can file a lawsuit. It is something else entirely to bring that lawsuit to trial; it is something else to actually win the case. Second, it's pretty likely that the assistant principal has no expectation of this case ending up in court. She is suing the parents--if the parents own real estate, their homeowners insurance policies will almost certainly include broad form liability protection. That's essentially lawsuit insurance--the parents turn to their insurance companies, and the insurors will likely attempt to settle the case for a couple of bucks to make it go away. Third, the first and second points describe, in glaring detail, some of what is significantly wrong with the American legal system.
Does she have a case?
It seems to me that this is one of those matters where both parties are jerks. The boys were jerks--that's why they attracted the attention of the assistant principal to start with. Then they demonstrated that they were jerks by putting up a web site mocking the assistant principal. Do assistant principals pick on kids in high school? Sure. Do big boys take their punishment without whining? They should. These two are jerks.
On the other hand, it seems pretty clear that the assistant principal is a jerk, too. If she managed to get the job of being assistant principal without noticing that the job includes a fair measure of criticism, she's not just a jerk, she's stupid too. But she is more than just a jerk--or stupid: she is a government employee. She is a government employee with substantial power--typically the assistant principal can issue (or petition a magistrate to issue) a court summons for a truant student; the assistant principal can also bring action to remove a child from home, sending the child to foster care. An assistant principal can suspend a student--within the walls of a school, an assistant principal is a very powerful figure whose authority is generally not subject to any supervision or right of appeal. And that makes this a constitutional issue.
The Constitutional argument
There are parts of the U.S. Constitution that provoke controversy. The right to criticize public officials in the performance of their duties is not one of them. There is a long and rich history of published criticism of public officials that is far, far more injurious than calling a woman a lesbian. (Abraham Lincoln, for example, was routinely described as having sold his soul to the Devil (here, for instance, and his wife's mental illness was frequently characterized as demon possession--and just reward for her husband's opposition to slavery.) The constitutional protection of a free press is well and widely understood to have a very broad reach. The U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously, a couple of years ago, that web pages are precisely the kind of "pamphleteering" that the framers of the Constitution had in mind. The principal focus of the pamphleteers was criticism of public policy and public officials--and they called people names.
New rule: If your kids are old enough to know what a dyke is, and can put up an online profile of a straight woman convincing enough to say that she is one, then by golly they're not kids anymore! I disagree primarily because most 12-year-olds know all of this. They are also shown to have brains that have not completely developed, especially relative to judgment and planning. As long as their brains aren't done yet, parents should still be keeping a close watch. If I remember right, brain development caused by normal growth ends around age 20.
Boom Shanka
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
well there really is something to look at here prinipals have the ability to ruin a students life by the decisions they make, now in this day in age where the student has the same ability to ruin the principals life all from a myspace. that takes the power from the powerful and gives it to the powerless. if the student did something wrong and was punished for it appropriatly that is one thing but if the principal (and this does happen) was out to get the kids in trouble or didnt even hear them out when they tried to defend their selfs then she got what she deserves example is my friend is in class he is a stoner, the teacher pull out a "fact" that smoking weed makes ppl calmer... what her whole defense about it was that the peice of paper that she got off the internet was 100% correct and nothing else was true. the friend of mine said it depends on the person and she shot him down and then he went and said well 1 out of every 2 people cant read (what he pulled off some website) and then turned to her and said i can read this so that means that you cant read because i am 1 person and you are a second person so no way can we both read.. this ticked the teacher off and he got sent to the office and got suspended for a week. and that is all folks
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
http://ms.daker.isgay.com/
This one may actually be a real one!!
Did anyone else just sense a jillion more [fake] myspace pages for this administrator being created? I could swear I felt that a moment ago... (well at this suit got something done!)
How can they be sued? Now my law knowledge is second to none, but it doesn't seem right to me. With these types of cases I always liken them to an extreme... Say a child takes a knife from home (logs onto his/her computer), goes out one night and murders someone (posts stuff about his/herteacher on a website), returns home and cleans the knife (wipes the browser history) and replaces it in the draw (logs off his/her computer). Is the parent negligent? We're they supposed to roam the town (trawl the web) looking for dead bodies (blogs) that they're son/daughter may have killed (posted on)? The best thing a parent can do is bring them up with ethics and morals, but in the end they are responsible for their own actions. I'm guessing she's sueing the parents because you can't sue a child, but that's just a stab in the dark....
The same thing happened at my school. Except instead of the teacher being a lesbian she was accused of being a crackhead. The student eventually lost and was banned from the internet for 6 months plus he had community service.
What someone should do is create a botnet that spams teh interweb's fora with so many randomly generated slanderous messages that no one else can be slapped with this shit anymore.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
When I was in high school, some kid spray painted " is a fascist!" on various buildings around the campus.
The kid did not get sued. He got suspended and was made to clean up ALL of the graffiti on the school property. Why is it that this person has to sue? Why not just discipline the kid? Is a lawsuit necessary? It seems like it just draws attention to the act and is punishing the parents instead of the children.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Goddamn it, you are an adult, and get to do what you want. Am I against you smoking where I have to breathe it? Yep I am. But should you be able to do it in the free air and (FFS) in your own car/house
Sera
P.S. My Mother is a smoker, has been her whole life. I sleep out in my Dad's shop when I go home. It works for me, it works for her, middle ground you see.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
God I wish I had mod points.
Am I the only one who first thinks "INTERNET: SERIOUS BUSINESS" when reading this?
http://myspace.com/cthun
I think a bigger question would be, what have (or had) the parents already done? If their kids are, in fact, running amock without guidance or any supervision/disclipine, then I'd say a nice fine would be a good way to disclipline bad parents. If the parents were in fact taking steps and they weren't working at the time (but they were trying to find a solution), then it's bad enough that they have uncontrollable assholes for kids, but slapping a fine or lawsuit on them is adding insult to injury.
I've seen many sides to this:
- Good parents, with good kids
- Not particularly good parents, but the kids turn out pretty good
- Parents that try hard but have kids who are sneaky, clever, and manage to get into trouble anyhow
- Parents with kids who are borderline psychotic... I've seen parents afraid of their offspring, and they weren't bad parents (sometimes I suppose you just get bad gene mixing)
- Parents that are bad, that have kids that are bad
- Parents that believe their kids are good, could do no wrong, and are pretty much self-delusional
- Parents that are stuggling to support themselves and their kids, and just lack the time/energy for proper supervision (single parents, etc)
- Parents that have a good kid who went bad due to a bad decision, peer pressure, or whatever. Drugs can drag somebody down pretty quick
- Hormones, some people/kids change rather quickly
- Parents that have one good child and one bad (or several of either/both), without apparent reason
As per my usual comment, I work in schools, so I tend to see a lot of kids, teachers, and parents. Some kids are just uneducated in certain ways, but otherwise good (I heard one using a nasty racial slur, but he was very embarrased when he found out what it meant). There are also parents who are jerks... they're the ones that park in the loading zones, bus loops, or whatever, cussing and behaving like morons in front of all the students, and generally think that the earth revolves around them and their offspring (until they get home, and then it's just them).
I can't say what the solution is in this case, and neither can anyone here who doesn't know the parents, kid, and others involved. Life's unpredictable, and who's to say what the full situation is. But I think that the "could YOUR mother do it" is a very fair comment, and a rather insightful one on the part of the attorney. The other comment would be "did the parents even try," which can be pretty hard to determine, but hopefully will come out in the end.
Is it just me, or does having a teacher sue a student completely invalidate the in loco parentis state of the school regarding that matter? Students have limited free speech (and other) rights while at school because the school is acting in place of their guardian. If the school recognizes that the parent, not the school, is responsible for the childs behavior, they are admitting that these restrictions did not apply when the offending remarks were made. Therefore the student has complete First Amendment speech rights - the school handbook (for example) has no bearing on the case.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
I've noticed a number of people complaining that a parent can't possibly police his or her child 100% of the time. As a parent with only one child, I can tell you that this is pretty much true. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for you, I am also 100% responsible for what my child does until he or she becomes an adult (18).
Look at it this way: if my daughter spray paints your house, breaks all your windows, and writes "Dirty Slut!" on your garage door, who do you think pays for that? While my daughter would probably spend some time in community service--which is exactly what these kids should do, probably related to gay rights or antidefamation--the parents should be held financially responsible for restoring this woman's good name, including monetary reward for pain and suffering. It sounds like it's more than just calling her a lesbian online, but disparaging her reputation and putting her name and picture out there when she did not want nor ask for that publicity.
In any case, these kids are just mean little bastards, and if the parents aren't going to take responsibility for them, they should at least reimburse society for having to do it for them.
Would you punish a glassblower who sells bottles because people use them to make Molotov cocktails?
Would you punish the postal service because somebody sent defaming letters?
Would you punish Adobe because a terrorist organisation found it easy to use Photoshop to make its propaganda?
MySpace is a container, a nonjudgemental tool. It is similar to an arts and crafts workshop, where anybody can use the tools. The workshop managers can attempt to supervise and prevent abuse of their "equipment" and their "display cases", but even in the real world supervisors can't be everywhere.
I find it ironic that on the one hand we have compulsory education in the U.S., and on the other, the liability of sending children to school may become too great a burden for most folks. Wanna bet that a new type of liability insurance will be created and sold as a result of this? I wonder whether the assistant principal will be able to prove that her school taught the child enough of the basics in law that the child knew it was illegal to impersonate then defame another person utilizing the global reach of myspace. This may be a situation where the pot calls the kettle black. If it's the schools responsibility to teach children how to follow the law and be civil, and the child didn't learn that lesson, then the child not following the law is somehow the parents fault: on the other hand, if it's not the schools responsibility to teach the child the law, then why is there a compulsory education requirement?
What if the profile was created from a school computer while they were on school grounds? By the idea of In loco parentis, wouldn't the school be acting as the parents? As one of the principals of the school, wouldn't she need to sue herself as she was partially responsible for the students' behavior?
....Just a thought.
The big worrying thing I see here is not the question of whether 'freedom of speech' is more important than treating each other decently. What really worries me is this revenge industry: the business of making money on people taking out their grievances on each other. You use civil lawsuits to kick other people with in the hope that you can wring every last dime out of them; never mind that they are fellow human beings and that you could have reached a common understanding quite easily, had you tried. This is supposed to be the country in the world where most people think of themselves as 'deeply religious'.
what is it then? a vegetable?
This would have been a fun jape by some naughty kids. Give them a good whack with the cane and send them on their way. Job done. It is possible to over analyse these things and get overly hung up on damage done. Heck, I think of some of things we got up to (I mean other people got up to, natch) at school and squirm now - you'd probably get social workers, child psychologists and all sorts involved plus a bunch of litigation no doubt from any 'injured' parties. Kids will be kids and kids are very good at coming up with pranks and TBH, as pranks goes, this one sounded like a good one. Punish the kids, try to keep a straight face and move on people.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I have never seen Seinfeld. Chances are a large part of Slashdot hasn't seen it either, despite its popularity in the USA. Slashdot is a global thingamabob, y'know.
It does seem to be a problem, though, that a catchphrase or inside joke is assumed to be globally known. It is also a problem that typed messages lose a lot of nuance. Calling him dumbass for not knowing the inside joke is simply, well, silly.
Parents cannot monitor everything their children do, even if they had the time.
However, the question of liability goes both ways.
If every child who suffers bullying (phyiscal or emotional) at school sues that school for failing to properly supervise the other children, teachers everywhere would comment on just how impossible such supervising is. Indeed, the actions to provide the level of supervision required would (quite rightly) be classed as invasion of privacy (cameras in washrooms for example).
If everything in the article is true, it sounds as though a jury may have a hard time believing that (A) the children were just indulging in high spirits with a light-hearted prank, and (B) no damage was done by it.
This doesn't sound like some sue-happy opportunist whining "everybody's picking on me" - it sounds as though she's had some pretty deliberate, malicious damage done to her reputation. (And, yes, MySpace gets checked by employers and prospective employers... and even if it wasn't, what part of this whole fake website idea seems like it remotely might have been a good idea?)
So, yes, if my kids were involved (I shudder to think of it - I have two), I'd have no choice (legally and ethically) but to shoulder the responsibility, and then in turn see to it that they learned better from this. (How? I don't know yet, but the temptation of combining thumbscrews and Yoko Ono music would probably be there...)
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Be prepared to another brazilian invasion. MySpace's already giving signs of being a huge hub of gossips, vulgarity, diffamation and other Orkut features. Though, of course, it's not a feature of the software, it certainly brings out the worst from people. It's like, suddenly, all imbeciles in the world were given their private TV broadcast channel to transmit their opinions and thoughts throughout the world.
:)
thankfully, it's easier to change the channel than on conventional TV, thanks to the multitude of channels providing much better content...
I don't feel like it...
"Not even a little bit curious? You're not really a lesbian if I'm there..."
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Kids aren't the same as adults.
:-)
You're right that children should be educated and taught to take on adult responsibilities but my understanding from the literature I've read is that children are not capable of behaving like adults - apart from not having the experience to make judgements their brains have not biologically matured and hence their actual thought processes work differently (please correct me with references if I've got this wrong, apologies in advance). If you've ever worked with teenagers and tried to have a rational argument with an upset one, you'll know what I mean
My understanding is this is one of the main reasons that children are not treated the same as adults under the law: the belief that children were merely small adults (and had the same responsibilities, needs, and legal status) fell out of favour over 100 years ago.
Of course children can learn to behave in a more reasoned way and consider their actions more deeply if they are given time and respect and included in decision making processes, I agree with you there.
Where is the Asst Principal's responsibility in this for being so hated that the kids would lash out this way. She is the adult with alot of power over these kids daily lives. While not condoning what these kids did , why is no one looking into her actions that have caused such a response. It is always blame the teenagers, blame the parents as a knee jerk reaction. The ass't principal is being paid by these very same parents tax dollars. She obviously is having problems handling her job.
So what they actually did was out her as a Republican.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
There's a new word for that...
Teenagers are almost adults. People who think that teenagers should be under the thumb of parents until the day they turn 18 are idiots. You need to prepare them to be able to take charge of their own life and that means transitioning from an authority roll to an advisory one. This transition shouldn't happen the day after they turn 18, it needs to be gradual if it is to be successful. Parents who fail to do this end up with very poorly adjusted, rebellious, angry teenage children who don't listen. This is bad for everybody.
Arguing that it's a parent's responsibility to oversee everything a teenager does all the time shows a deep lack in understanding of what it means to be a good parent of a teenager. You need to give them the freedom to make mistakes and be their soft place to fall when it happens.
This is a dumb prank, designed to be hurtful, played on an easy to hate target. Standard teenage behavior. If being young and impulsive and hurtful were a crime, we'd all be guilty at some point. Being an adult, a person entrusted with authority and abusing the legal system in this way to clear your name after a prank is a lot less excusable. Understandable, but inexcusable. I'd fire her.
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All this shows is those kids weren't smart enough to get away with it. If they had been smart enough, they could have made the web page humorous, made it a parody of the mannerisms of the principal, phrased the whole sexual orientation thing in vague phraseology, etc. then possibly they could have saved themselves from what really amounts to a frivilous lawsuit. Personally, I think that if you're going to be a teacher or principal in a school system (public, private, parochial, whatever) you have to understand that you're in for a lot of ridicule and learn to shake it off. Seriously, is this moron going to sue the next time someone tapes a rude crayon drawing of her on the cafeteria wall? Sure, suspend the little reprobates. But sue? Seems a bit extreme for a stupid prank.
What if she created the page under the supervision of the teacher and not her parents? Could she then countersue? :-) Oh, our great legal system...
I am incorporating your comments as a comment to my posting at http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/2006/04/14/294/ It is my post where I talked about the same thing you did!
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I know there's the whole "ignorance of the law" thing but we ARE talking about american highschoolers here. Add to that the fact that these libelous accusations and rumors are part of everyday life in most schools and if I was a judge I'd be hard-pressed not to laugh in her face and tell her to grow a thicker skin if she wants to keep doing what she's doing for a living. If a student came to them about these things that undoubtedly would be what they would tell her. It seems like they are upholding a double-standard. You want to severely discipline them? Use suspension, the only recourse you educators make the students aware of.
> They claimed she was GAY. Maybe it's just me, but BIG FREAKING DEAL.
> apparently being gay is such a horrible thing to most Slashdotters that accusations of it amount to libel.
It's not about you, or us. Ask the bigots that will complain to the school board and try to have her fired if it's a big deal or not.
Are you now or have you ever been? See, the truth rarely matters in emotional issues like this - the accusation alone is enough to ruin her career, regardless of whether or not it should.
Most people who complain to schools demanding a book be banned from the library/classroom will PROUDLY tell you they haven't read it. And the reason is, the perception is more important to them than the facts. Some talking head told them it was bad, and they trust that talking head more than their own.
Also, the libel charge is about deliberately making false claims to injure someones reputation, regardless of the specifics of the claim. If this were in the heart of cattle country and they (falsely) said she was a militant animal-rights activist, what then?
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
IANAL either, but as I understand it truth is an absolute defense against charges of libel. If that is the case, then any statement which is worded so as to express an opinion cannot be considered libel, as the statement (the existance of the opinion itself) must be true; the only one who could claim otherwise, in any event, would be the defendant. AFAIK there are no defamations laws regarding opinions, whether true or false, and the statement itself describes the opinion, not the plaintiff.
On the other hand, I've always believed that the various defamation laws are not just unconstitutional ("Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech"), but also harmful in and of themselves. In a society where you can say whatever you wish without (legal) repurcussions, people tend to take random, unsubstanciated remarks with a grain of salt, and perhaps informally censure those who make too many such remarks, which is a logical social solution for a social problem. On the other hand, when defamation is illegal people tend to assume that any false statement will be countered with a lawsuit -- and thus any uncountered statement must be true. This downware trust spiral hurts those who can't affort to sue and floods the courts with pointless suits over ridiculous, unfounded assertions (as in this case).
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Though this page on the EFF site probably explains what I'm saying best of all --