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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).'"
Well, I graduated high school 6 years ago, from the school right next to Hickory High. It's not a big area, and when we say "IT Department" we usually mean one guy who manages the computer labs and the classroom computers, and student assistants. There's a district supervisor who helps out with big issues (I wonder if it's still Scott... he was a cool guy). Most of the technical solutions such as firewalls, etc. are barebones to meet bugetary constraints, so I wouldn't imagine it hard to bypass. There's only so much you can do on a limited budget with limited resources. I know my IT guy also taught two classes (there were only 4 periods in a day at my school), so a lot of the work was left up to the "technology assistants" (i.e., me). Hickory was a little larger than my school, but I doubt they had significantly more resources than we did. I doubt that there was so much going on there that the IT guy was stressed doing this "extra" work. Hell, we spent most of the time just trying to think of stuff to do.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
I can block myspace using the $50 Linksys router I use at home, it doesn't require much equipment or knowledge. As far as I can tell, myspace also does not have very many IPs and from what I have seen they are all located in the same range. Though flat out blocking 255 addresses to eliminate one site isn't generally a good idea, it gets the job done if you're in a hurry or are an unskilled IT administrator.
:)
If you have access to a linux box, I like to use iptables to redirect myspace to something more interesting, such as KittenWar. Yeah you will still get a few complaints, but the odds are that your average myspace user has spent the last 15 minutes or so looking at pictures of cats, giving them time to calm down a bit.
Disclaimer: I don't like censoring websites, but have been required to do so in the past. Sometimes it's necessary, most times it's just some person higher-up using "the children!" as an excuse for their holy crusade. Ain't life fun...
Statement from Justin Layshock's parents on why they brought suit
Original MySpace page created by Justin Layshock
To say the principal and school board are overreacting would be putting it mildly.No, spoken defamation is slander. Published defamation is libel. If a reasonable person would not believe a statement, then damage to reputation can not occur and hence it is not defamatory. For example, you could argue that a reasonable person would not believe a MySpace page purporting to be from a school principal admitting to being a paedophile, and so it would not be defamatory. I can say "George Bush told me that he has sex with goats" and this is not defamatory because it is ridiculous.
- Mark Twain, Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar