In a pair of rulings by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week, judges sided with students who contended in separate cases that they were unfairly punished for publishing fake MySpace profiles of their principals. But the victories may be construed as defeats for student free speech, because judges' opinions held that students can be punished for speech made off-campus and online if it is deemed to "materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school." Neither of the cases ruled on earlier this week met that standard.
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4 comments:
It isn't right for students to bad mouth teachers nor for teachers to do it to students. Online teasing, bullying, or whatever you want to call it should be banned. I am all for freedom of speech but I also believe in control. It is getting to the point where everyone can say what they want with no punishment at all. It's not right. Way back when people could physically fight out whatever problems they had and it cut down on a lot of the "talk". Now people talk the talk but can't walk the walk. Makes me sick.
11:17, True, students shouldnt talk bad about teachers and vice versa in any shape or form.
But there is absolutely NO way to prove who says what over the internet. A person should not be charged for what an IP Address produces.
Just because what was said came from the person in questions' IP address, does not mean that person actually typed it. Honestly, most of the time the person in question probably DID type it... but legalities are not about honesty, its about what can be proved in the court of law.
This entire scenario should be thrown out of court 99.9% of the time... because an IP Address is not DNA or a human being.
Frankly, the fact that a judge would let this pass is quite ignorant.
2:17 I'm confused. The two cases that immediately pop to mind is the MySpace case presented here where a principal was made fun of and the teacher got into trouble over her own blog. I know what you are saying about IP address but MySpace and blogging is all about personalization. Something gets posted on your site because YOU put it there. True that there are hackers out there; however, everything involves risk. Hypothetically, if I was ever hacked and something was posted slandering someone else I would be the first to step up and say I did not post that. There are steps that can be taken to prevent being hacked. I'm sorry but I disagree with you. I think that if a post can be tracked back to a specific individual (e.g. blogs, facebook, myspace, twitter, etc.) then the person who claims that site should be penalized.
Soon enough, you will see the first case where somebody gets popped for disrupting the operation of government by making fun of a politician.
There are already libel laws. Use them. Either there are financial damages or not. But schools should not have the power to do anything outside of their physical boundaries.
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