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Court Rules Parents May Be Liable For What Their Kids Post On Facebook

Posted by samzenpus on from the sticks-and-stones-may-break-my-bones-and-fake-profiles-will-always-hurt-me dept.

schwit1 writes Parents can be held liable for what their kids post on Facebook, a Georgia appellate court ruled in a decision that lawyers said marked a legal precedent on the issue of parental responsibility over their children's online activity. The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled that the parents of a seventh-grade student may be negligent for failing to get their son to delete a fake Facebook profile that allegedly defamed a female classmate.

2 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. The Actual Issue by hduff · · Score: 5, Informative

    The parents were notified of the defamation and took no action to close the FB account, which remained available for another 11 months. The parents were held directly liable for failing to act once notified, not for what was posted on the fake FB account.

    It's all in the PDF of the decision linked in the summary above, if you're not too lazy to read it.

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
  2. Re:You have it wrong. by saloomy · · Score: 5, Informative

    At worst, the parents are guilty of "contributory negligence" for not being software engineers.

    Nonsense.

    If your kid is in a park, grabs a rock, throws it at someone and causes harm, then you are responsible. Not the parks office, not the city, not the state, and not in the case of this incident, the school.

    As a parent you are responsible for the actions of your kids in place of themselves since they are children. If you want to understand if the school should be blamed, ask yourself, would the school be blamed if the person was an adult? No. Of course not, that would be silly. The School had as much to do with the activity as the ISP serving the school. It isn't accepting full liability because you chose to exercise their facilities to perform your actions. Just like an ISP isn't responsible if you use their network to organize a murder (see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act). The school is not liable, the person is. But, because the person is underage, the person's parents are responsible. Its as simple as that. You are responsible for your kids actions, you in place of them. Don't like it? Don't have kids. Having kids involves accepting responsibility for them. Its that simple.

    So, no sir, you have it wrong.