Principal Cancels Classes, Sues Over MySpace Prank

Earnest writes "A prank MySpace page has led to a barrage of lawsuits and the misuse of school resources as the principal targeted by the pranksters attempted to find the perpetrators. In 2005, students at Hickory High School in Pennsylvania created a fake MySpace profile of principal Eric Trosch. As a result, the school's IT staff spent about 25 percent of his work time dealing with the issue and finding the culprits. That's not all. 'Trosch kept at it, even taking measures that led to the "cancellation of computer programming classes as well as usage of computers for research for class projects." Now the basic educational mission of the school was being compromised in order to keep students from visiting these profiles during school hours (students were still free to look at the profiles from home, of course).'"

Comments

Little git

[Bloke down the pub]

This student, Justin Layshock, then filed suit against the school district. He admitted that what he'd done was wrong and stupid but argued that the profile had been created from home and that the school had no right to jeopardize his academic future by placing him in an alternative program for something he'd done after hours.

So he posts knowingly fake allegations that can (and probably will) ruin someone's career, and then he cringes because he's put on report? I think he got off lightly.

He should be thankful he wasn't expelled. I don't know if the relevant jusrisdiction has criminal libel - if not that's another thing the little jackass should be grateful for. Finally, what if some vigilante had acted on this false information?

i'd be pissed too

[Adult film producer]

been to myspace lately? That place is a fucking wasteland of annoying webpages that push shit onto the viewer, it's a throwback to the 90's and when geocities was in it's heyday, except now it's 10x more annoying... god damn pages with mp3's, flash ads, animated background images, "this person has 15,234 friends, and here is an image of every fucking one of them.." and then comments from those "friends" that make no sense, sometimes they're spam... sometimes jackasses post a million images just to fuck with with your browser memory limit... and then there are contests about who has the most "friends" on myspace.. fuck that, nobody has friends or "buddies" on myspace.. just middle-aged men that are dumb enough to add all these teenage girls to their myspace friends list and jerk off to the private images that 15,234 friends have access to while listening to a duran duran "girls on film" mp3 that they didn't choose to play, it was fucking forced on them by myspace. I am calling on all blackhats to do their part and take that steaming pile of shit off the internet... take it down boys, you have a go.

Re:I'm sure most posts will be against the princip

[Pig Hogger]

The US is a democracy with political freedom of speech. Thus, one can criticize any figure of authority. This is part of life, and school is supposed to teach life.

When school teaches that criticizing/lampooning authorities is unkosher, that school is automatically unamerican and the principal should be shipped to Guantanamo without so much as a dildo to idle the time.

Re:I'm sure most posts will be against the princip

[Penguinisto]

...an attempt to punish students who had done something within their rights that he didn't like.

Blatant libel is a right?

/P