Slashdot Mirror
Disorderly Conduct Charge for Offensive Classmate Ratings
Hatta writes "A Chicago-area teenager who posted a demeaning list of female classmates on Facebook has been arrested for disorderly conduct. Is this an appropriate response to online harassment, or a threat to free speech?"
Is this an appropriate response to online harassment, or a threat to free speech?
There should be consequences to being an asshole. Glad this guy found that out too. As someone who's gone through high school in this country, I don't feel bad about that guy at all.
"The teenager is believed to be responsible for a list that ranked 50 female students — using racial slurs and ratings of body parts — that circulated around the school and on Facebook, police said. The teen is accused of handing out hard copies of the list Jan. 14 at various lunch periods and posting a copy online, according to police."
This list was spread both through Facebook and throughout the school. Is it valid to address this as an online harassment case when the article does not even make clear which distribution method the teenager is being charged with disorderly conduct for?
He didn't get arrested and charged because he posted it on Facebook, TFA says he distributed hard copies at school.
Things like this are becoming much more difficult for any rational person to reach a sensible conclusion on. My initial reaction would be that you don't censor or criminalize thoughts. Even mean or vile ones. As long as it is not libel, you just need to have thick skin and move the fuck on.
On the other hand, it's a different thing when it's something that has a global audience of potentially billions, will be archived and indexed by search engines, possibly have a longer life than the person it is about, come up in searches for that person for the rest of their life by future friends, mates, and employers and otherwise follow them around indefinitely. You can't graduate the internet and move away from the "attack" and you can't just go to a new town. You are stuck forever with whatever some ignorant idiotic juvenile wrote years ago or whatever some spiteful twat might write about you today.
If I had a kid and this happened pre-internet, I would tell them to ignore it and know they're better than that and that the words aren't true and to move on and eventually it will go away. With the internet, I don't know what I would do. As a parent, I think I would be helpless and stuck. How do you stick to the ideal that nobody should be able to dictate what you can do or say short of actual libel or threats and reconcile that with words or images that will be there under google for your name for decades to come?
Perhaps more importantly, how do we make sure that we deal with this in a rational way and don't just say "that pisses me off, so I'm going to make a blanket law about it" like with that stupid bitch and her family that drove that little girl to kill herself over myspace? A case where it was so tempting to have so much anger and hatred over the incident that even the completely logical person was tempted to say "fuck it, I don't care what the lasting legal consequences are for the rest of society, as long as we come up with a way to stick that bitch in a max security prison for life".
He allegedly handed out materials at school, not just post it on Facebook. Pretty big difference IMO.
So a d-bag teenager put a 'demeaning' list of his fellow female classmates on-line and got arrested for it. Rather than the social stigma, female students, and student body appropriately handle this idiot, law enforcement decided to step in.
If this doesn't prove we've come full circle into a nanny state, I'm not sure what will. He's 17 for cry'in out loud, and in High School! How does an arrest benefit society here?
We've never had free speech in the US and probably never will, as long as people can make excuses to suppress it like "national security," "cyber bullying," and "copyright." So, how could anything be a threat to what we haven't got?
Great Intellect...
In response, teachers and students started a campaign against sexism, selling T-shirts that read “Respect.”
Instead of "started a campaign", it should read "exploited the situation".
Free speech doesn't protect racist or sexist slurs. It's good to see existing laws used instead of making up new ones just for the net On the other hand the response is a little over the top. So let me guess, the police chief's niece was on the list or something?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
My little sister was on this list. Seems like an overreaction to fuck him over like this but it looks like she was pretty perturbed over this whole thing, reasonable I guess. I wouldn't say it was bullying but it definitely caused a lot of drama and people were really upset over it. It should probably be mentioned that this wasn't the first time he did something like this so the harsher penalties make a little more sense in that context. Then again, he's a black kid in a community controlled by whitevadulrs so I'm sure if he offended their little angels then he is gonna face some serious problems.
If patriotism is racist, is racism patriotic?
Good. Because free speech does not equal freedom of responsibility. If the government prevented him from posting it in the first place, then it is a freedom of speech issue. In this case, they charge him/her with disorderly conduct after he/she posted it. Note they have not order the post erased, although I am sure the sites will remove the posts anyway for TOS harassment violations if they haven't done so already.
So, women rating on the air, by millons of American is fine, but you can't rate the butt in your school ? There is something I don't get...
Seen otherwise, it's OK to rate the beauty, but not to rate ugliness ?
Does Google index inside of Facebook like that?
I thought half the point of Facebook was that they were the ones with good access to peoples info.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Hardly. Freedom of speech doesn't cover slander.
Too many people today go "grow a thicker skin and get over it", but then there are sites dedicated to bullying like encyclopedia dramatica (which the world would be better off without) portal of evil (the older more homophobic cousin) and fox news (which just makes shit up for ratings.)
The average... oh 40 year old might be able to tell the difference between the three and some gossip and discern how truthful it is. However the average child under the age of 18 who is still in high school may consider killing themselves because they "haven't grown a thicker skin" and even college students and NEET's may lack social experience and feel the world is against them.
The world would be better off if the power seeking psychopaths(who see nothing wrong in bullying) and general asshats (those that get jollies from bullying, but get upset when it happens to them) would be thrown in jail/community service for a month after a quick jury trial that finds they caused psychological harm to their target. These should be treated as civil (not criminal) unless someone died or ends up in the hospital from wounds.
However we shouldn't overstep the line from trying to control what people say (freedom of speech) and do (teasing,bullying) just to "Save the Children", because it always boils down to bad parenting. Perhaps maybe it's come time for parents to take responsibility for their children, where if the child is found guilty (see previous paragraph) the parent can take their place.
The thing is, we don't need more jails, just the experience of being held responsible for being a inhuman jerk.
Don't know the juvenile penalties, but for an adult, disorderly conduct is punishable by up to a month in jail, while libel is punishable by up to three years. TFA didn't mention the exact slurs, but if any of them was "slut", then in Illinois that ia automatic libel since it is an accusation of fornication. TFA says "body parts", and "cunt" could reasonably be taken to be synonmous with "slut".
The whole problem behind bullying is that it is given a pass by the criminal system. Stuff that goes on in high school would never withstand police scrutiny in the adult world. Just an inadvertant brush against someone in the adult world is often enough to bring the police out. Any sort of name-calling would result in immediate job termination (compare to what it takes to get expelled from high school), likely a civil libel suit, and possibly even criminal libel charges.
The guy should spend a month in juvenile detention, but I doubt that will happen with a juvenile "disorderly conduct" charge.
how do we make sure that we deal with this in a rational way
By not caring about it and realizing that it, like all other kinds of speech, is merely speech. That's what I would call "rational." The amount of people listening is irrelevant. It is still speech.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I endured worse than what this kid is described as doing from more than a score of kids on a daily basis, and NO ONE in the school district rushed to my defense like this. Not a single one of my tormentors was ever arrested, suspended, or even disciplined.
I wonder: if this had been a GIRL shopping such a list about boys, would we have even had a Slashdot article to read about it? Would we even if it had been a boy with a list tormenting other BOYS?
Fire: "...the student no longer attends OPRF."
Call police: "...arrested at his Oak Park home"
Alternative could be a therapy/encounter session in a save environment where he and the people on this list are brought together to express their feelings about what he did, let him figure out why he did it and that there may be other possibilities for him to get what he actually needs.
Far from anything like that happening there....
I think "subjection" might be more reflective of the point of view you are expressing.
At least until humans can advance to the point that sexual identity is not nearly universely considered a close equivalent of identity in most social situations.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
"Free speech doesn't protect racist or sexist slurs."
It only protects speech you like, right? Sorry, there is no free speech if it comes with strings attached. I might disagree with what they say - even find it sickening - but it is their right to say it, and not yours to say otherwise. Why? Redefining "free" to be only what you want is more despicable than anything a person could say.
Fine, then you'd have no problem with people standing outside your house and yelling abuse at you day and night for weeks or months on end??? Because it's free speech right. You wouldn't bring noise pollution laws, or harassment laws to bear? No you'd defend them to the death. NONSENSE.
When's the last time you or someone you cared about was harassed to the point of being suicidal? If you have children are they fair game? Would you be fine if your children were disabled or mentally impaired? What if your wife/girlfriend/mother was on anti-depressant pills and suicidal?
People talk such NONSENSE and BUNK when it comes to free speech. No one decent human being would find the above examples acceptable or defensible. There is a reason that these things are illegal. There are reasons for harassment and stalking laws. These are good things even if they violate your overly broad view of what free speech means.
But hey sandlotters, continue to mod this drivel up!!! Because slashdot has come to mod up only mindless groupthink drivel. (The irony is these defenders of free speech will mod me down!!!!)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
From Wikipedia article: United States defamation law
... some categories of false statements are so innately harmful that they are considered to be defamatory per se. In the common law tradition, damages for such false statements are presumed and do not have to be proven. "Statements are defamatory per se where they falsely impute to the plaintiff one or more of the following things":
Allegations or imputations "injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession"
Allegations or imputations "of loathsome disease" (historically leprosy and sexually transmitted disease, now also including mental illness)
Allegations or imputations of "unchastity" (usually only in unmarried people and sometimes only in women)
Allegations or imputations of criminal activity (sometimes only crimes of moral turpitude)
Reading between the lines of the news article - it appears that each women's name was listed with offensive or injurious comments that could be judged "defamatory per se" which would allow each plaintiff to proceed with legal action in civil court for damages, because Illinois does not have criminal law for defamatory acts.
The article seems to indicate that the charge of "disorderly conduct of a minor" was accepted in lieu of a full defamation damage civil law class action trial. This appears to be acceptable to the plaintiffs and to the legal custodians of the minor who allegedly perpetrated the offenses.
In the United States, the standard defense to a charge of defamation is to prove the truth in the contested statements. "Defamatory per se" weakens that defense since the simple act of alleging or imputing the reputation of a person in any of the four cases above is sufficient to be judged by a court as an act of defamation.
On these grounds, it becomes clear that Donald Trump has engaged in a campaign of defamation against the US Office of the President by imputing moral turpitude on the current office holder - Barack Obama. While this is not treated as a criminal act in New York State -- criminal defamation is on the books in New Hampshire, Kansas, North Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado, and Virginia -- and both civil and criminal complaints are being considered for those states.
On the flip side, Donald Trump's employment contract with Mark Burnett Productions includes a standard "Morality Clause" that can trigger instant termination of employment if the employee is deemed to have committed a criminal act or a public act of moral turpitude. This protects the production of "Celebrity Apprentice" from civil actions for recovery of damages due to actions of a performer. Clearly, a public defamation campaign against the Office of the President counts at least as Moral Turpitude - and because "Celebrity Apprentice" is produced under a license granted by the BBC and Thames Talk TV - such a campaign would be considered a criminal action in United Kingdom courts.
There is currently a write-in campaign to the offices of NBC Universal and Mark Burnett Productions requesting that Trump's employment with "Celebrity Apprentice" be terminated for violating Trump's contractual Morality Clause. This campaign was initiated by MSNBC's own news commentator Lawrence O'Donnell. See his video clip from "The Last Word" (aired on MSNBC on April 27, 2011)
For instance, when nooses were left in the schoolyard and nothing was done until the kids who left the nooses were beat to a pulp, the natural reaction was to say the white kids were just funnin' and did not deserve to beat up. OTOH for many who understand the rules of high school, and understand that some things between boys require a level of physical interaction, the outcomes were unfortunate but predicatable. The school chose not to stop the bullying, so the kids took the issue into their own hands. A kangaroo court was prevented due to publicity.
Likewise when an a 11 year old girl was repeatedly gang raped over some time, The community was willing to brand her a slut. Many saida1 she wanted to be raped, and the alleged rapist, one a star athlete, should not be held responsible. After all, what would it do to the scholarship opportunities? Again, easy publicity fo the internet and a video means that the community will have a hard time blaming the victim.
We see this publicity everywhere. Conservative radio wants to call women sluts and black men stupid and liars. How much father would Trump's birther thing have gotten, and his accusation a black man could never have been the best a Harvard without cheating gotten without the easy access provided by the internet for contradictory facts. The powerful have always had the bully pulpit. In school these are the agressive boys, sometimes girls, and star athletes. But the internet is the real world, and the real world does not operate by adolescent rules. Humiliating another person has never been the right thing to do. It is just that it used to be easier to get away with so we ignored it. Now a bully has the world as his or her judge.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Disorderly conduct charges would actually be the most appropriate response, IMO.
A teenager went overboard. Way overboard. We don't want the FBI involved, but what was done here does sound like it crossed the line into the range of crying "FIRE" in a crowded theatre, or of going into the opponent's stands at a football game and repeatedly disparaging their star player and refusing to leave.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Yeah. This is one of the reasons we should turn our backs on the people who want to sell us tech like Facebook.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Wikipedia has a article on disorderly conduct.
Actually, I read this and think we are finally seeing officers of the law figuring out how the internet fits in.
Clearly, this is disorderly conduct in a couple of public places, and it sounds like the appropriately class of response is being pursued.
Misdemeanor, as opposed to felony. A bit more serious than a traffic fine, but not nearly on the level of being arrested for grand theft, even.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Wome are protected at all costs, men killed by other men trying to show the women how "good" they are.
Imagine if he was in a "good" muslim socity.
Mrs. O'Leary's Cow needs to come back and finish her job.
The whole city is nothing but a bunch of failure and faggotry.
Fuck you all.
I guess his crime was more like crying "FRIGID" in (less than crowded) "theatre" of his remaining friends (judged from the fact that he has to resort to things like this to get attention from his buddies, and, I'd suspect, rather unwelcome attention from the girls).
Paul B.
Isn't this what police arrest people for just to get them off the street? As I recall, the charge almost never gets a conviction (of course that assumes you have a lawyer and not a public defender who will plea bargain any charge, even "breathing air while alive").
No one decent human being would find the above examples acceptable or defensible.
Decent? Well, that's subjective, but I certainly would. They are indeed examples of free speech.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Back in my day, we didn't ARREST punks for printin' nasty things about the womenfolk. We chased them down, surrounded them, knocked them over, and kicked them until their ears bled. And we liked it! We LOVED it!
I am not left-handed, either!
Are the police making things better? Does the involvement of a bunch of "officials" make this better? Kids in this country are allowed progressively fewer freedoms in schools because the administrators in high schools are given broad powers over students even for things that are totally not school related or even at school. They are going to grow into adults who think that level of censorship is acceptable to maintain "social order".
Even if what this kid did falls under libel, defamation, disorderly conduct, or the next law - being a jerk - I question if we really want to continue down this path of bringing the hammer of self-righteous justice down on people for stuff that most of us do daily. Take a second, consider the sexually charged environment of a high school with the hormones and the close quarters and the churn rate created by changing classes, and ask yourself how big of a jump it is from two guys doing what EVERYONE does - judging people as they walk by - to writing said judgements down because they thought they struck comedy gold. Maybe they needed a way to cope with BS that had been thrown their way as well, and being kids, aren't aware that once you write things down they are a lot harder to control.
You can disagree with what someone says and still defend their right to say it, and some situations simply suck. If the alternative is worse than the infraction itself, then it is not an alternative.
What if your wife/girlfriend/mother was on anti-depressant pills and suicidal?
Then they need to drop the pills and kill themselves already. The world is far too crowded as is without people whining about how terrible their lives are and threatening suicide to get attention.
I guess someone have not watched that movie recently... ;)
It seems to be (IANAL) a precedent that one can make personal attacks on individuals who are "public figures" of enough importance for the targeted audience of the speech (stretching it a little bit) -- in the context of this article, would you agree with him ranking three most-popular girls in his class, but not with continuing all the way down to the bottom? ;-)
And yes, I do find him to be a jerk!
Paul B.
You may be correct in the UK or Canada or most (maybe all) other countries but in the US the bar is pretty damn high if you want to convict someone for any sort of speech/writing. Since what he had was written i would expect that it would be even more difficult (unlike when someone is yelling in your face, you don't have to read his ratings if you don't want.)
Is this really more offensive than nazi's marching through a town full of jewish holocaust survivors or KKK members marching through the black areas of town (with racial slurs in both cases)? Not even close.
Added you to my friends a couple of your posts back, and reading this reply made me grin that I was right!
People do not seem to have any distinction between law and morals anymore, and think that the former is a sure-proof replacement for the latter. And it is sad... Was it you who said that it was the matter of the girls and his classmates (whom, I suppose, still wanted to be friends with the girls! ;) ) making him a pariah, rather than State's police and courts dealing with his transgressions?
Paul B.
Yes, if "Kelly" doesn't want to be rated "hot" by you, and especially if she doesn't want to be rated "Asian", that is a slur and a racial slur. Sexual slur, too.
Or (assuming you're white) maybe you just want to be able to go get yours with the hot (non-white-race) bitches across town every Friday night?
Does that help you see the problem?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
This kind of behavior has been going on in schoolyards forever. Sometimes its a joke between friends that has no intention of hurting the targets' feelings, as it is never shared outside the group. Other times it is bullying. The difference with Facebook is that you cross the line between a private joke between friends behind someone's back and bullying without intending it.
Maybe all of them except for the one the "crime" was committed in...
In the US "verbal assault" is "intentionally or knowingly threatening another with imminent bodily injury" (this is from Texas I believe). Being offensive doesn't count. Threatening to beat your wife/neighhbor/etc to death is a crime but calling them a hateful name is legally ok.
I'm guessing that you are either not in the US or you are from somewhere else, but the US provides considerably more protection to free speech than any other country.
Check, say, wikipedia on what a misdemeanor crime is. (As opposed to, for example, a felony.)
We don't have enough details to judge, perhaps, but this could well have crossed the line into precisely the sort of misdemeanor crime that are described as disorderly conduct.
Making demeaning comments about a few girls is discourteous. Making them on-line is a bit more than discourteous because of the public and persistent nature of the web. Repeating such behavior may give cause for getting, say, a restraining order.
When a whole lot of girls become targets, it can definitely be disorderly conduct in a criminal sense.
The line would be drawn if one or more of the girls targeted became afraid for her personal safety.
This is not a case of making up new (and probably inappropriate) law. This is a case of applying existing law, possibly (probably?) appropriately.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
You're the guy they arrested, right?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
What you are saying may very well be true in other countries but not in the US. It's perfectly legal to write or say hateful, racist things about people. There are plenty of court cases involving the KKK, Nazi party etc. which clearly show this. Don't assume that the laws in the US mirror those in Canada, the UK, Australia or any other country.
Libel might be a criminal offense in other countries but it's not in the US. You don't go to jail for libel in the US. It's a civil penalty but in this case it's doubtful you could win. No way "cunt" and "slut" are synonymous. The kid might be offensive and bringing the paper to school might be against school policy which might get him suspended or expelled, but it's not criminal and someone is likely going to end up paying a lot of money to him in a civil rights settlement.
...not a criminal offense.
Lifting a paragraph from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:
In the case of Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629, 652 (1999), the Court held that peer harassment in the educational context is limited to only that conduct that is "so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims' educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution's resources and opportunities."
Maybe this is true in this case. But the recourse is either for the school to take disciplinary action or for the victims to sue him.
Have we come to the point where a boy can say that a girl is too fat or too large in the rump or too black or too white or whatever? People normally do insult each other. So they put it on the net. Big deal. Police getting involved is absurd. If anything is offensive it is some mullet brained sot calling the law over this nonsense anyway. Look at Bush in the president's office. A chimp could have done better as president. What I can't say that? I can't say that a teacher looks like a bald headed wart with a yellow tint from liver rot? I can't say that the girl in the next desk needs to clean it up as she has a foul odor below the belt. Maybe I can't even say I didn't care to see the minister in the porn shop last week.
What kind of fool thinks they won't get through high school without someone thinking they are a piece of crap? Who cares? Yes, the schools have trouble with violence and all kinds of nonsense. Killing free speech won't help at all. This nation is sick. We have simply gone over the edge. When I look back at our boys at D- Day or at Iwo Jima just how could our soldiers function with the Nazis and Japanese not liking them at all? I mean don't they need love and sugar teat at every moment just to keep from weeping and falling down and sobbing? Lord God I want to rant. Disgusting sniveling officials with as much integrity as my toe fungus need to be burned alive or something. Stop this madness.
Forbes and The Huffington Post have already come out in support of the kid. This is the sort of thing that gets the attention of free-speech organizations. It's an opinion, and protected as such.
He may have a good case for false arrest. Note that he was arrested in his home, for a past event. Was there a warrant from a judge?
You're a judge, you're posting here, and you back away from the chance to apply existing law appropriately without inventing new law just because it's them intarnets?
Public. Yeah, Facebook is a public forum, or at least many parts of it are. The people there are often lawfully assembled.
How can you say that distributing this kind of a list, on the internet or printed, is not tumultuous, or even fighting conduct? The older brother of one of the girls posted a comment earlier, did you not see it and the reactions of some of those who claim to be defending free speech? I think, if I were the brother of one of the girls who didn't like her rating (whether because it was "good" or "bad"), I'd be inclined to a little disturbing of the peace, myself. That's incitement.
Sure, comments casually made in the hall should be ignored. When only one or a few girls are targeted and it gets out of control, restraining orders should be sought. But when you get more than a few girls targeted, it definitely may cross the line into criminal behavior, just as statutory rape is not necessarily benign.
If you realy are a judge, I'd suggest you examine your own tendency to judge things too quickly.
I don't know the facts of the case. It could well be that the boy who was arrested may be the subject, on the contrary, of discriminatory legal attention. It may be that the list itself and the environment at schoolare such that this should not be considered even misdemeanor disorderly conduct. It may well be that the boy who has been charged needs a capable advocate/social-worker more than he needs even suspended jail time. But he probably needs to be aware that he's at least dangerously close to crossing the line between discourteous behavior and behavior that causes actual harm to others.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
There is nothing difficult about it. And the tech makes no difference. You regulate how people physically react to what they see and hear. You don't put a cork in a person's mouth because you don't like what they are saying. You go after the one who uses what they said against them. In other words, attack the one who listens and acts on hearsay, not the one who speaks it. Do not confuse the verbal with the physical..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
personal(thought), private speech, public speech, broadcast & publication are different things.
the amount of people listening is relevant in that it influences how much effect what is being said will have.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
I'm less concerned that this kid was pulled up on charges of psychologically hurting 50 girls in his school and perpetuating a culture of bullying (which is terrible, speaking as one who was bullied extensively), and in some weird way more concerned that Mark Zuckerberg not only did Hot or Not at Harvard and got away with it, but has now enabled that sort of cyberbullying for about 1 billion people (either directly, or indirectly through Fear Of Missing Out, FOMO)...
Witness the world's tiniest violin.
This is just one of an increasingly endless number of examples of aggressive police or prosecutors twisting existing laws into such pretzels of meaning so they can use them to go after anyone for anything. This technique is being used to circumvent Constitutional freedoms of free speech and press to harass those who run afoul of politically incorrectness. This boy was expressing his opinion of a group of other people and putting those opinions on paper. Regardless of how repulsive they are to some members of society, both activities are, or should be, protected from criminal prosecution by the state by the 1st Amendment. He may not, however, be immune from civil court action for slander filed by offended persons. But, even in civil court, the evidence of guilt has to depend on more than just the "feelings" of the claimants. Feelings are often so fickle and and easily enhanced by thoughts of instant riches.
The ease of manipulation of PC attitudes for political purposes by unscrupulous people exposes society to those who would manipulate or distort social attitudes of news or events to demean a person or a group. Any word, especially those like "those", "they" or "them", or gender jokes, all examples of free speech, are interpreted as evidence of anti-social behavior with the evidence resting solely on the "feelings" of people claiming to be offended. A jar of urine containing a small Christian cross is given a name "Piss Christ" to "label" it as artistic expression of free speech, but a child reading the Bible silently to herself on a school bus heading to or from school is accused of violating "separation of church and state". An unusual argument to be sure, unless our society is so collectively ignorant that the common man cannot distinguish between a group of several hundred peers elected to create, debate and pass laws, and a dozen school administrators and board members making rules. Indeed, it could be ignorance, for it takes zero brains to enforce zero tolerance rules. Such is the fickle state of political incorrectness.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
You make a good argument there for a civil tort... defamation or libel or something... maybe even a restraining order to put a stop to it. But criminal charges? For speech; even offensive speech? That goes way beyond the pale, I think.
Imagine all the people...
On the other hand, it's a different thing when it's something that has a global audience of potentially billions, will be archived and indexed by search engines, possibly have a longer life than the person it is about, come up in searches for that person for the rest of their life by future friends, mates, and employers and otherwise follow them around indefinitely. You can't graduate the internet and move away from the "attack" and you can't just go to a new town. You are stuck forever with whatever some ignorant idiotic juvenile wrote years ago or whatever some spiteful twat might write about you today.
This is true, but remember, no one gives a hoot about what some "spiteful twat" thought or wrote about you in high school in the adult world. Just like the person who the nasty intertube posts are about won't necessarily be able to "graduate" from it, neither is the person who wrote it. It will follow them around just as much. And with that truth, who would you rather be? The one who made the post, or the one the post was about?
The constitution merely says "speech." That's it. When faced with that, the amount of people listening truly is irrelevant, is it not?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
It's not a federal offense, but individual states can pass (and have) criminal defamation laws. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law#Criminal_defamation Convictions are infrequent, but they do happen.
Things like this are becoming much more difficult for any rational person to reach a sensible conclusion on. My initial reaction would be that you don't censor or criminalize thoughts.
When thoughts become words and the words are pubished, they become actions.
how do we make sure that we deal with this in a rational way and don't just say "that pisses me off, so I'm going to make a blanket law about it" like with that stupid bitch and her family that drove that little girl to kill herself over myspace? A case where it was so tempting to have so much anger and hatred over the incident that even the completely logical person was tempted to say "fuck it, I don't care what the lasting legal consequences are for the rest of society, as long as we come up with a way to stick that bitch in a max security prison for life".
Tell me what is socially redeeming about the mischief and malice that drives a child to suicide? What is irrational in saying that this is conduct that no healthy society is obliged to permit or ignore?
The roots of free speech in the American legal and political tradition are rooted in the desire for open - on-going - political debate without fear of government interference.
It was never - at least the beginning - defined as a right to say whatever you damned pleased without regard for the consequences.
That path leads to settlement outside the law. The horsewhip. The duel. The family fued.
"Free speech doesn't protect racist or sexist slurs."
It only protects speech you like, right? Sorry, there is no free speech if it comes with strings attached. I might disagree with what they say - even find it sickening - but it is their right to say it, and not yours to say otherwise. Why? Redefining "free" to be only what you want is more despicable than anything a person could say.
Fine, then you'd have no problem with people standing outside your house and yelling abuse at you day and night for weeks or months on end??? Because it's free speech right. You wouldn't bring noise pollution laws, or harassment laws to bear? No you'd defend them to the death. NONSENSE.
When's the last time you or someone you cared about was harassed to the point of being suicidal? If you have children are they fair game? Would you be fine if your children were disabled or mentally impaired? What if your wife/girlfriend/mother was on anti-depressant pills and suicidal?
People talk such NONSENSE and BUNK when it comes to free speech. No one decent human being would find the above examples acceptable or defensible. There is a reason that these things are illegal. There are reasons for harassment and stalking laws. These are good things even if they violate your overly broad view of what free speech means.
But hey sandlotters, continue to mod this drivel up!!! Because slashdot has come to mod up only mindless groupthink drivel. (The irony is these defenders of free speech will mod me down!!!!)
If someone writing or saying something about or to you makes you suicidal you are a twit!! and I hope you remove your self from the gene pool. this is why we are now seeing all this CRAP about bullying being made illegal. it a load of crap. Words are words. remember "Sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you"! This is getting crazy, as these babied no backbone children get into the workplace we'll start to see bosses going to jail over poor work performance evaluations because it hurt their employees feelings.
Now this said there is a difference between bullying and assault. I someone touches you you have every right to defend yourself up to the point that they can no longer proceed with the attack. That's why the first blows should be maiming blows, only takes 1 or 2 and they stop trying to hurt you. and they learn a lesson for life.
So when should we expect Karen Owens to be arrested? Hmm...? She did just about the same thing at Duke last year and instead of bitching about it many people, mainly feminists, held her up on high as the picture of "empowerment".
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." - US Constitution
Sounds pretty clear to me...
Sounds like the people who were targeted by this offensive speech should sue in civil court for damages caused. The police and potentially the school have committed federal crimes for charging him wrongfully and removing him from the school (assuming they did) since it is most likely funded by the government.
The right to freedom of expression is the law, even if what is said is offensive to you. If it causes you harm you can sue for the harm caused.
If you want to engage in adolescent behavior here, that's fine.
I'll get a chuckle out of it and we go on.
Adolescent behavior in the classroom is, well, unavoidable. Or the cure would be worse than the symptoms. I'll agree with that much.
But such lists should not be simply ignored by teachers. Girls can be seriously scarred, emotionally, by such lists. In an ideal world, we might wish that all girls should be tough enough, or get tough enough. This world is not such a world. Moreover, such lists, especially when given the appearance of tacit approval from the adults, can be used as emotional blackmail, resulting in physical abuse.
("You want your rating upped? I'll tell you how, ...")
The adults also matter. School is not some sort of sandbox where kids get to do all the wrong things to each other and always come out unscarred, and the adults are not just ornaments necessitated by the Victorian ideas of the parents. I don't care how idealistic you are, but kids are vulnerable, and adults have responsibility to see that things don't go too far.
Misdemeanor criminal charges are not the only way to deal with such disorderly behavior. They are one way and may be necessary. The little we know of this case, I'm telling you that I cannot say they are not necessary.
Since someone who claims to be the brother of one of the girls on the list responded here, we can theorize that we know some of the problems in the system in this case, and guess a lot of things about why the author(s) would make such a list, and we'd probably miss something important. No, we'd surely miss something important.
Criminal charges at the misdemeanor level may be appropriate here, and the school needs to have the option. Not saying that he should be found guilty. We'd hope they do not abuse the option, but that they have the option is not a bad thing.
Maybe I should say it this way: We know the school system could abuse this. But the cure that would prevent the possible abuse is just as bad for all involved as the cure for preventing children from doing anything bad to each other would be.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
"The whole concept of "disorderly conduct" if about social control and nothing else"
Yup, and what's wrong with some level of social control? If you are going to have a society (a group of people larger than the family unit) , you need mechanisms for agreeing and compromising and deciding on what is appropriate social behaviour. Otherwise there is no way of managing behaviours that are offensive to the majority. There will always be some people who fall outside of the agreements for what is socially acceptable and if a society is to function it needs ways of managing these people and their behaviours. In some societies these social norms are managed by random acts of violence, while in the most part, laws that are agreed by the majority are used to moderate these behaviours. Usually there is a sliding scale from minor tellings-off through to incarceration.
If you don't like your society's opinion over what is appropriate or inappropriate behaviour then you either have to work to change the majority's opinions on the specific issues (assuming you live in a republic or a democracy), be it talking about people in public, not wearing clothes, carrying guns or whatever, or you need to move to another society where your behaviour fits in with the majority view. As you note, it has always been so.
I think the only time in your life you're allowed to do what you want is probably when you're under 3 years old and at home with your parents, and even then there is social control over behaviour, most parents consider it inappropriate at that age when you push food down the front of your shirt rather than in your mouth....
re: There is a reason that these things are illegal.
One could claim that there is a reason for just about anything, heck, WW2 nazis surely claimed they had a reason to exterminate all the jewes and in their mind it was all legal too, in fact it was illegal to hide or provide any assistence to them. One can rationalize just about anything to support a claim - it has a reason.
I think this whole argument about what should be the definition of free speach, or which part of the speach should be protected and which should not, or what forms of free speach should be protected and what should not is a tad pointless when the opinions of the masses do not really matter too much in the process of making the laws.
None of your examples sound like a reason for the government (in this case the police) to step in. Free speech should protect people from abusive government. If John Jackson want to sue Jack Johnson over what was said let them - as long as it's a civil lawsuit.
People talk such NONSENSE and BUNK when it comes to free speech. No one decent human being would find parent's examples good cases for a nanny state to take care of.
Speech is either free or not.
the internet is the real world
No, it's really not.
The problem is that when you go to a job interview or otherwise interact in the real world, the comments don't follow you at every turn and you don't have to rely on that third party being willing or able to discern which comments they read on the internet are legitimate and which are just asshats. The website or facebook site someone made about you being a complete whore and genital-wart-riddled slut maybe pops up in the top few results of every search on your name for the rest of your life. Or maybe the more clever and devious take the less obvious route and complain about you as an individual they did business with, so that because you dumped some vindictive guy you dated for a couple weeks, he has now made sure you have plenty of results showing up online with every search that implicate you as a deceitful fraud.
I suspect that it becomes more difficult to react to things on the net where they have a greater audience and permanence with a mere shrug and an "I'm above all that".
I agree that words are just words and as a libertarian, I despise any attempt to regulate or control anything that doesn't have to be, but it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to reconcile that ideal with the current reality, where a single angry person that you turned down advances from or had a bad experience with or just plain don't get along with can significantly impact your reputation in meaningful ways and yet still not be considered to have reached the point of "libel" (or even if it does, be so difficult to follow-up as an individual in libel cases as to make it so).
I may not agree with what he said, but I'll defend to the death his right to say it. In other words, it's a threat to free speech
You are a clueless idiot. You may not agree, but you'll defend to your death my right to say it. In other words, you're a clueless idiot.
Not so. He's willing to protect your right to call him a clueless idiot unto death (damned generous, I say!), but it does not follow from this that he's a clueless idiot. It is true only that you evidently think he's a clueless idiot. Your claim may or may not be true, but we will have to await a conclusive deductive proof to assess its truth value.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Now 'badly' is a subjective term, and that's where the debate has to occur - why there's this slashdot thread after all.
But if you stand outside my kid's bedroom at 3 in the morning swigging whisky and waving a gun around while shouting obscene comments, then indeed I think coercion is appropriate to remove you from my lawn.
This of course is an extreme example; but if we both agree that this is a situation where the majority of people would feel that person is behaving inappropriately and it's appropriate to remove them from my lawn whether they want to go or not, using coercion, rather than engaging in a measured debate, then we are then into a discussion of where you apply the sliding scales of coercion.
My first thought was that this is an attack on free speech. But after thinking about it for 5 minutes, I think I can imagine a situation in which disorderly conduct charge was justified. If the kid distributed posters in school and was asked to stop, he'd have to follow the order to stop. While on school property, students are not in a public space. Access to that property is restricted and those administering the property are fully within their rights to set rules for access to it. If he refuses to stop the restricted behavior or agrees to stop but later on continues despite having agreed to stop, then this would be bona fide disorderly conduct.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Didn't Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook do this?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Kill yourself.
If my sister were on that list, he'd have gotten the shit beat out of him. Now, you may go ahead and debate the morality of violence and dis and dat, but I am not exactly concerned with ethics. I am however concerned with punishing little self entitled shits like this guy.
People talk such NONSENSE and BUNK when it comes to free speech. No one decent human being would find the above examples acceptable or defensible. There is a reason that these things are illegal. There are reasons for harassment and stalking laws. These are good things even if they violate your overly broad view of what free speech means.
You are correct--no decent human being would find the above examples acceptable or defensible. But racist/sexist slurs are not--of themselves--illegal (they can be if they are part of some physical threat of harm, incitement to riot, false reports/alarms to cops, or a small handful of other things).
Acceptable =/= legal. Unacceptable =/= illegal. There is a subset of actions/speech which are both indefensible and unacceptable, but nonetheless legal. White supremacist groups fall in this category. They have every right to hold their beliefs, share pamphlets, etc, so long as they don't threaten others with physical harm or incite others to do so.
will be archived and indexed by search engines
Now, here's an interesting point. Person A writes something, is accused of libel or defamation or something, is declared guilty. Can search engines be found guilty of enabling access to this "illegal" material, pretty much like napster?
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
There is another way to do it.
Make hateful comments about every single person you know, and get them pageranked high.
Have everyone on the Internet do this.
Then, there's too much noise for the signal to be destructive.
+1 ass not capped /.
-1 site made
I don't care what they're yelling, I don't want them keeping me up at night. This falls under "time, place, and manner" restrictions.
I'm a geek and went to a public high school. You figure it out.
That's awful strong talk, suggesting others aren't decent human beings... I'm not sure it woudl be allowed under your regime.
Harassment and stalking laws aren't involved in this case. Just disorderly conduct. Because it isn't stalking to circulate a list ranking females by appearance, nor is it harassment.
No one decent human being would find the above examples acceptable or defensible.
You, sir, are a moron and a coward.No decent person should sacrifice his/her freedoms out of fear of a phantom hypothetical mob of crazies standing outside his house all hours of the day and night yelling at you. You're afraid of people yelling? Fuck you. Don't impose your stupid cowardly regulations on the rest of us because you're too much of a pussy to handle stressful situations. If there are local ordinances about noise at night or whatever, that is a completely separate issue. Don't try and combine the two to make your argument seem more palatable. Have you ever had a member of your family raped and mutilated by someone claiming to do it in the name of God? Maybe we should make all religion illegal, just on the off chance that some crazy somewhere decides to do that. You don't get to restrict freedom based on what-ifs. What if this... what if that... what if such-and-such... EVERYTHING WOULD BE ILLEGAL... That is the way of cowards, and you fall squarely into that category.
If this idiot teen had only posted the comments on FaceBook, I'd think the arrest was WAY out of order. But I'm glad it did happen, because this little nutcase went beyond that into harassment. Passing hardcopies around? Using racial slurs? That denotes a sickness that needs to be stopped, and maybe arrest will do that. Maybe someone will now see this kid needs help and try to understand why this was done. Maybe now mom and dad will HAVE to pay attention to what their child is doing. Sad as it is to say it, people would have shrugged this off if it had just been a FaceBook posting...until someone was driven to suicide. But by then it would have been too late.
BTW -- the concept behind freedom of speech in the US is, No prior restraint. But that doesn't mean there wouldn't be consequences after the fact if you go too far.
If I state that I believe someone to be a lying, thieving, useless-as-tits-on-a-bull, scum-of-the-earth dirtbag, then that's MY opinion (to which I'm entitled). ..... dirtbag without supporting evidence, then that becomes potential slander (if verbal) or libel (if published) and can thus be contested by the offended party.
However if I state that someone IS a lying,
So the question comes down to whether was he expressing an opinion, or was he making a statement of so-called "fact"?
If the former, then the involvement of the police is an infringement on free-speech and the right to express and honestly held belief, opinion or conviction.
If the latter, then it could be libellous (as it was written rather than verbal), and the offended party or parties can bring action against the author.
I don't believe however that either situation warranted the involvement of the police charging with disorderly conduct.
Please note, the above is MY opinion, to which I'm entitled.
Sounds like one or more of the officers involved had a relative on the list. If making a demeaning list ranking female appearance was a valid cause for a disorderly conduct arrest then Robert Blackwell and Joan Rivers would be working on world records for citations! Its a personal opinion not a manifesto to start a race war!
What next? Do they stack out undercover officers in the Boys, and yes the Girls rooms, of the school to take down all the other offenders who use the bathroom walls instead of paper and Facebook?
to be sent on a slutwalk: http://www.slutwalktoronto.com/
A lot of people tries to justify this things with "it's only a kid", "he's just in high school", as if it was Ok to do ugly things while you're young. Few people sees the other side of the story, the one for people being ridiculed in the school and on the internet. This has nothing to do with a "nanny state" or "freedom of speech", this is about handling bully individuals. We live in a society and when somebody goes beyond the acceptable conduct of that society something has to be done to correct it. This is not the wild-west anymore.
Discipline is fading out of public conscience and we need to get it back in the picture. This kid is getting disciplined, no more no less. I think it's the appropriate thing to do.
It happened in Wisconsin protestors outside the homes of various lawmakers. Shouting slurs and comments I will not repeat to the entire family and neighbors for that matter. I disagree with that action however it is the basis of free speech
They didn't like changes and were voicing their opinions openly and using drums and other noisemakers to get attention
Deplorable but I will defend free speech even when I don't like it. Challenge free speech with free speech. Marginalize the bad speech squeeze it out BUT permit it.
You'd have to be a parent to understand how damaging -- for an entire lifetime -- stuff like this punk's activities can be to young teens. We've all blocked out the nasty stuff from our junior high and high school days ... and there must have been some in everyone's experience. But this is beyond a prank. It's beyond "in poor taste." It's an example of the damage the internet can do in the hands of someone who's incredibly stupid, irresponsible and immature.
Unless one is universally bereft of all reason, it should be understood that bad behavior is not to do with freedom of speech.
We live in a civil society, meaning appropriateness is key. What possible 'freedom' connection is such a list?
Now perhaps most of the comments are from those still in their teens or less, so take note.
Never ever get lost in empty rhetoric about rights and freedoms, You don't have a right to harass, or embarrass someone just because you can.
Don't make this so difficult - with freedom, comes responsibility: your rights end where they impinge on the rights of others.
If you want to defend the poor guys that can't get any action, let me suggest a couple of things:
I don't want to think you really think so, but just in case you do, getting action is not a particularly inalienable right. Non-sexual friendship is not even an inalienable right. There are some things that forcing destroys.
Asserting the right to say no is no-way equivalent to asserting the right to not be told no.
If you can't see that, then real relationships are always going to be frustrating to you. I'd suggest that you'll find more satisfaction from the pages of Oui, except that what you probably need is to quit reading/viewing the porn long enough to figure out that the yesses, noes, and maybes are a big part of the reason real people are a lot more interesting than those idealized images you see in porn.
Figure that out, and maybe you have a hope that of understanding why a reckless and clumsy proposition could, in some situations, cross the line into misdemeanor crime.
Pardon me for being blunt. And if you were intending to be sarcastic, well, you need to learn to use the sarcasm tags a bit more effectively.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.