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Criminal Libel, Free Speech And The Net
from the free-speech-online-meets-Utah dept.
If the youth is so charged, it will mark the first criminal libel case in Utah history involving the Internet, and one of the first anywhere.
His father told reporters his son was fighting back against hostile peers. "For him, it was just a tit-for-tat thing. Everything he has done up to this point was in retaliation for what other kids did, stuff that was just as vulgar and just as hurtful. For me, the question isn't whether [my son] is going to be held accountable. It's whether the others are going to be held to the same standard."
Not likely. In 21st Century America, harassment and cruelty are fine as long as you don't do it on a computer.
The Net is raising new questions not only about copyright, but about the limits of speech and commentary in cyberspace -- a culture in which the First Amendment sometimes seems almost timid, perhaps even inadequate. It also focuses more attention on epidemic Net hostility and cruelty, against which some people may begin to take formal action. Public net postings are frequently vicious, and sometimes anonymous posters traditionally bear no responsibility for the the wantonly stupid things they sometimes say. In the context of all the other conflicts over the movement of intellectual property and speech online, some sort of legal response seems almost inevitable.
In the overall context of personal and commercial Net traffic, assaultive comments are rare. Hardly any result in actual physical harm. But as the Utah incident demonstrates, that doesn't mean they're inconsequential. The anonymous Utah Web site was vulgar and offensive, but compared to many public flames, only tepid. Flaming is obnoxious -- most of it is profoundly inane -- but the idea that it's libelous has lots of implications for life online. And none of them are good.
Questions of online responsibility for words are difficult. Anonymity is easy on the Net, and it's often impossible to know if comments online, no matter how shocking, are true or false. Vicious postings can be more damaging than the face-to-face-kind. They can be rapidly disseminated and accessed by countless numbers of people instantly.
They also occur in an environment of fear and confusion about the power of new information technologies. As with copyright, historic notions of libel and accountability may not realistically apply to this new kind of social geography.
On his Web site, the Utah high teenager allegedly called school personnel "drunks" and some female classmates "sluts." He also cast doubt on the work ethic and competency of several faculty members. He concedes the site -- put up partly in response to taunts and harassments from peers - was a mistake. He never threatened anyone with violence, and his friends and classmates vigorously deny that he was violent or menacing, or was even perceived that way. Some of his classmates told reporters he was "weird." The student said one reason school officials (they suspected him immediately) wanted him gone was that he had dyed his hair pink. He had also, said school officials, had frequent run-ins with the principal of his school and had an altercation during a football game last fall.
The teenager arrived in the small town of Milford five years ago, and had trouble fitting in from the first, said his classmates.
When school officials learned of the site on May 16, the principal notified the police, who seized the boy's computer and took it to the State Crime Laboratory for analysis. That same day, a Juvenile Court Judge ordered the student sent to Cedar City's juvenile detention center where he remained for several days until he was released.
He has left Utah and moved temporarily to his grandparents home in Southern California, pending a decision by county officials whether or not to bring criminal libel charges against him.
The Web site at issue here is, in some ways, the digital equivalent of the taunting and baiting that has always gone on in many American schools. But Net baiting raises new questions. For one thing, we are living in the post-Columbine hysteria, in which anger, alienation and offensive speech online is increasingly equated with danger -- and draws the attention of law enforcement. That makes it a powerful First Amendment issue. If a teenager calls one of his classmates a slut outside of school (but not online), it's hard to imagine he'd be arrested, driven out-of-state, or charged with criminal libel.
When he posts the same message on a Web site, it's almost assumed he could be a potential murderer, and police respond accordingly. This makes offensive speech a crime. The whole point of the First Amendment is to protect offensive speech, even when it's obnoxious. When it becomes harmful, erroneous or defamatory, libel has always been the appropriate legal recourse. Libel laws don't, of course, when dealing with most public figures, or in the face of anonymity. But either way, the police aren't supposed to get involved.
The outcome of this case and others like it is critical. Free speech isn't the right to speak for free. The right to free speech in the United States means the right to be free from punishment by the government in retaliation for most speech. (It isn't absolute. You can criticize people, but you can't threaten them.) On the Net, speech has been almost completely free of interference from the government. The Utah case is a serious threat to that freedom, since the police activity isn't the result of threatening but offensive speech.
To grasp the significance, just imagine an Internet on which offensive speech becomes either criminal or libelous.
On our early-generation Internet, users have generally spoken and written (and downloaded) without inhibition or concern for any legal issues (like copyright or libel). If Utah officials and schools in other jurisdictions press ahead with this and other pending legal actions, that could change.
Along with copyright and patent lawsuits, libel actions are likely to become more commonplace online, as viciousness in posts and sites grows along with the number of people accessing the Net. The growing number of corporations and their battalions of lawyers moving online also are eager to curb unrestricted speech, as it creates -- in their minds -- hostile environments that discourage new consumers and thus are bad for business. Online hostility and viciousness could begin to have unpleasant consequences, especially for a free Internet.
Net incidents like this one seem to provoke especially irrational, even hysterical overreactions. People who say offensive things don't generally expect the police to come crashing into their homes, seize their computers, root through their e-mail and files, then toss them in jail for evaluation for a few days. This response seems obviously unconstitutional if applied to the offline, adult world. But post-Columbine, offensive and angry speech -- especially if it's delivered digitally -- is not just being banned but criminalized.
Beyond technology and commerce, the Net has become a bastion of both freedom and individualism. This is, in part, a positive side effect of the lack of inhibitions made possible by anonymity. The Net tradition of freedom has grown and become established at almost precisely the same time conventional media have become corporatized and homogenized.
America presents itself to the world as a free and morally superior culture. But in many respects, it is a bizarre and unconscious civilization. Even as it creates some of the most astonishing technology in the history of the planet, it willfully refuses to consider its implications in a sane way. The balancing of Net freedom against the right of individuals to go online without being assaulted or defamed is complicated, especially for a social system that responds to technology in such a simple-minded way.
Here, when troubled teenages lash out at peers and teachers online, we don't sit down with teachers, counselors, parents and administrators. We don't call Constitutional scholars, technologists and social scientists to ponder rational solutions to unprecedented techno-driven 21st century problems.
We call 911 and turn a kid who has trouble fitting in into both a refugee and a criminal suspect.
Not the first time - Previous student victorious (Score:3)
Unfortunately, this case was settled at the local level, and no national precident is there. However, this case should help the defence of the student as it argues *for* his rights outside of school grounds.
Facts, precedents, citation, TWIAVBP (Score:3)
1) This is not 'one of the few cases'! As far as straight (civil) libel goes, existing 'cyberlaw' goes back to the 80's, with mailing lists and BBSs and has definitely been upheld internationally. "international" is important, because you can be sued in jurisdiction where the 'damage' occurs or where the 'victim' resides. Here are some cases/sources:
2) Do a websearch for "criminal libel" and you'll find that its primary use worldwide, historically and currently is against journalists . One of the 'Inciting Abuses' that contributed to the American Revolution was a (then British) court verdict that a newspaper was guilty of defaming the reputation of the Governer-General of New York by (accurately) revealing his corruption.
3) To address another of Katz's points, here are mini-case studies in dysfunctional human behaviour on the net [anu.edu.au]
Katz was on my 'exclude list' for a few months, not because I dislike his writing, but because his loose use of facts and analogies leads to a sloppy, infuriating discussion. A profesional writer should investigate his facts and limit his speculation to what those facts support; If he doesn't, the readers will certainly go hogwild. This is the first Katz article I've read in a while. I am not pleased.
Re:Hmmm ... two sides to this (Score:3)
Whether you believe that you should be allowed to post whatever you want on the net or not, you must agree, jailing someone over their speech is just downright wrong. These things should be dealt with in civil court, there is no reason for police to get involved, computer seziure, or jailing. I'm quite disgusted by the US for doing this.
-- iCEBaLM
The School's address (Score:3)
Milford High School
62 No. 300 W. / PO Box 159
Milford, Utah 84751
You all know what to do. If even 10% of Slashdot writes a physical letter, that's about 10,000 pieces of mail. Even send a post card with "Good luck Ian!" scrawled on the back. Show these asses that, yes, the outside world knows what they've been up to and are not happy.
----
Loyalty (Score:3)
It seems to have gotten lost in this discussion (it was at the bottom of the cited article) that he was not merely disparaging his classmates and teachers out of a personal grievance: he was defending and avenging a friend of his who had been publically disparaged in the school newspaper and on several private sites.
The story says she (the friend) was the butt of some "unsavory criticism" in the school paper's "gossip column filled with tidbits about the romantic lives of Milford students." In other words, evidently his friend was the victim of public, in-print, school-sanctioned sexual harassment. Not to mention libel.
This changes nothing of the fundamental legal issues, but it does color the character of the case. This is not just some twerp flaming people because they hurt his feelings (though considering how ill he was treated, from the account of his father, I think he would not be out of line if he had). This guy was attacking the people who hurt his friend, probably committed a crime against her (libel and/or sexual harassment), and did it with complete impunity. He was was standing up for a friend.
Bless his heart.
----------------------------------------------
he's not an adult (Score:3)
Re:What's the difference? (Score:3)
So you recommend taking the abuse quietly, dealing with it in some quiet, non intrusive manner, and allowing people to keep piling shit on you while you deal with it all nice and neatly by some mechanism which doesn't inconvenience anyone.
Well, Fuck you.
I say fight back. If you can kill the mother fuckers then at least expose then for the shit eating bastards they are. I still have a lot of rage pent up inside me at high school officials and students because of the abuse I recieved. I'm a martial artist, I work out a lot, I play quake, I relieve stress with all of these. But it doesn't always work. Especially when something like this comes up. All of the rage I have inside of me starts to bubble to the surface because it's still there. I can never get rid of it because I didn't have any effective way of preventing the abuse I was recieving. Sitting quietly and taking their shit is NOT AN EFFECTIVE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM. And I'm getting tired of sanctimonious bastards that claim it is. You might be content to get the shit kicked out of you every other day, endure verbal abuse, and psychological abuse while quietly dealing with it but some of us are NOT. We want it to STOP and we WILL stop it. I'm 20, I eventually plan on ending up back near my old high school where I will become a serious pain in the ass for the administration there. I don't like to see kids get crapped all over and have no recourse but to sit and take it.
If someone pulled that kind of crap at work I'd have them fired. But in school there's nothing he can do. The administration doesn't help people like him, they want him to conform and shut up.
So don't get all holier than thou and tell us to sit quietly and take it. Get your sorry ass out there and try to put a stop to it. Because if it goes on long enough more people are gonna start seeing columbine as a viable solution to their problems.
Kintanon
Another, perhaps more humorous net-libel situation (Score:3)
The person who has filed suit also claims he is going to bring civil and seek criminal RICO related charges against ANYONE who he judges has posted defaming comments about him.
One interesting twist, is that on a number of occasions, he has stated he will consider NOT filingsuit against those who "turn" on the gang, and give him information he can use against others.
The groups which are home to this ongoing battle of words are: alt.sports.gymnastics, alt.romance and alt.seduction fast.
The individual who brought suit runs a web based sports handicapping and seduction-related publishing business called Snodgrass Publishing, his site can be reached here [cybersheet.com]
The Civil Court Docket for his first of what he promises to be many suits is here [phila.gov].
I will leave it to anyone who wishes to investigate the various postings in these groups, and read the court docket (though it lacks any information other than dates for meetings/hearings, etc) to decide if this is kookery, or someone defending their civil rights.
btw, I go by a similar name on USENET.
Going on means going far
If it is, don't accept it. (Score:3)
I don't know what to say to you about that, because I didn't know your friends, and I don't know you. I do know that the same things happened to me however. I lost one friend to suicide, another to heroin addiction (to this day I don't know if he's still alive, because he wouldn't talk to me), and one to what I still believe to be a grisly murder at the hands of a group of yobs with nothing better to do than make other people's lives hell. I also know that he was a bright kid with a bright future. That was the one incident that made me stop being so maudlin, wake up and start standing up for myself. I don't mean physically, any heavily-built human could probably kick my butt if they wanted to, but that's irrelevant, because as you do get older, brains do become more important. You're obviously bright enough, to