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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 see as far as you do. I bit my tongue, finished my exams and got the hell out of Dodge, moved to town and am currently heading towards the last year of a Uni course that will (hopefully) see me financially secure at the end of it. Every so often I go back to my home town (to see my family), and see those that used to taunt me, still stuck in their mindset. It's been years, but they haven't moved on. I see them, and realise that I was mentally killing myself with fear and worry over nothing. I may not make much of a difference on a global scale yet, but I'll do my bit from where I'm standing to help those who were in my position out. If you have the ability to think like that, you've already got the f**kers beaten. They're stuck on their islands, proclaiming their manhood, but they've never touched anyone deeply, and it's them who are condemned to eke out an existence as a mediocrity until they keel over.
We're so hyped-up on the sanctity of life that we won't let people opt out of living - people who the rest of the world has already decided are totally worthless;
If I were them, I'd set about trying to prove the rest of the world wrong. Worked for me ;-)
But seriously, If you can transcend the prison that they built for you (and you finished, by letting them get to you) in your head (It will be rebuilt from time to time, recurring depression still affects me. I've done my fair share of crying, but now some people depend on me, and they're so important to me that, well, any problem I have can wait), and look at it from the outside, hopefully you'll see that you don't deserve to be there, not for them, not for anyone. If you're bright enough to use a computer, you have a skill that many don't (even if you're only starting out). Remember, though they don't understand it yet, they'll be working on cars and in factories, or maybe even working in stores when you're outclassing and out-earning them.
Few ever achieve happiness, and the rest either live in their misery or delude themselves that they really are happy, after all, painting on hollow smiles and crying themselves to sleep every night.
I used to think that, and I have the right to feel pain over my problems, but compared to Jason Haas, or the guy on here whose wife was killed by a speeding drunk, or my friends, lying passed out under a bridge, or six feet under somewhere more permanent, hell, I've got a better chance of dealing with my problems than they have. My smile when it shows is definitely not painted. I won't fake emotion for anybody. You can get out of the ruts you're in without letting go of life. For those who genuinely didn't believe otherwise, it's a tragedy. I wish the old adage 'Only the good die young' wasn't true, but sometimes it is, and all we can do is not add to the statistics.
When you wake up tomorrow morning, look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, "Where did I say I was going to be today, when I was 6?" Then let me know whether you start crying.
When I was 6, I said I was going to be a pilot. And you know what? I joined the Air Training Corps, hated the herd mentality there and left. But one day, either with money from my music or my work on computers, I'm going to take my money, learn to fly, and I'm going to plot a course directly over my old school, and the places I've been taken to remind me of 'the way it is' with sticks, fists and white trainers, and I'm going to spit on them from a thousand feet.
A hard goal, but not impossible. Please don't give up. Life was much simpler and nicer when you were young, don't think I don't know that. We all wish we could go back sometime [geocities.com], but the sad truth is, we can't. All we can do is take what we've learned and pass it on, while trying to make our lives as much fun as we can (and I can still have a lot of fun at 21). Read Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith for a more eloquent analogy on this and other things.
Obviously something shitty has happened to you, and I hope that it can be resolved. Just remember that pain fades, hate becomes irrelevant and life can be worth it. You could blow your brains out tomorrow, and they wouldn't care, because they don't have the mental capacity to go beyond certain things. They fuck rather than love, they work/drink/fight rather than think and they'd rather die than admit they are wrong. I suspect you are more than that. Don't die because of them, we need more people like you. Live to prove them wrong. And I hope you can hear me too, Ian.
Schools are like this. (Score:3)
In my experience, school authorities are most afraid of students who know how to use comptuers. Why? Because they are afraid of anything they know nothing about, they don't want someone to make them look stupid, so they overreact.
I used to work for our public school system. They fired our former Technology guru, basically because they did not like him. They shut down the network for a month, during the school year. Most students were back up within 3 weeks, however those who worked with the former techonology guru were still locked out. We were told that they wanted the system 'secure' before they let us back on. A few phone calls by our parents fixed that, but they are still afraid of us.
Just the other week, a student was sent into time out for using the Microsoft Chat program provided to every student in the Start menu. According to the Assistant Principal, this is illegal in the district's "Acceptable Use" Policy. She then refused to show this policy to the student in question.
Something needs to be done. School Officials are often good people who for the most part are just doing their job. But there are those out there who prey on the weak, the ones who school record are often times less than explemplary(sp?). If someone doesn't fight them, they could completely control students lives. They will find fault in a student who was trying to find his own way to deal with something that these officials SHOULD have known about and SHOULD have dealt with before it got to this. Its their own stupidity and they're going to make this kid pay for it.
Slut???? (Score:3)
There was a case where David Brudnoy, called some restraunt owners pigs. Another case, where an ex-MBTA employee called someone a racist. Both cases ruled that the statements in contact were opinions, not statements of fact. Therefore, is libel.
For libel, you publish statements as fact, not opinion that are false. Or opinions that imply libelous facts (not revealed).
Remember the swearing canoer case? The man was charged with using obscenities in front of women and children? That case was thrown out.
When we allow the state to dictate what speach is not proper, we start on a slipery slope.
It's been said before... (Score:3)
Are we insane? Why are we letting this happen? Every libel case, every time a site is shut down, every time another mouth is hushed we get closer to giving up our freedoms. And we're not doing anything about it. We need to stop these idiocies, we need to convince the lawmakers and the public at large that nothing is worth the abolition of free and unfettered speech. And above all, we need to do it now.
Otherwise, we'll just keep complaining about our lack of freedom until finally, one day, somebody tells us that we can't.
BIG difference. (Score:3)
If I'm in a crowded room and I yell offensive things about somebody -- even if they're untrue -- I can't get in trouble. If I do the exact same things in print -- like a magazine or a newspaper -- then I can. Because the source is claiming legitimacy, it is implying that what I say is true.
On the 'net, that's a boneheaded idea. Nothing on a website is likely to be true. Even CNN.Com publishes fraudulent virus warnings before realising they're untrue (famously, the story of an invention that lets you "fire a pulse of energy down a phone line and fry the modem" of somebody who's pissing you off). So libel should not be possible on the web.
The real issue here is that the people in charge and the people with more money are crushing an opposing view, for no good reason except that it opposes/offends them. They need to realise they do not have the right to do that! I can curse you to your face if I want to, and if I'm a beggar on the street and you're Bill Clinton you still can't touch me, once I don't threaten you.
Small town politics (Score:4)
If anything, the fact that this sort of thing can now get instantaneous national attention will probably help put a stop to it. But let's not overreact, OK? It's just the same old story with a new form of media thrown in.
Insane. (Score:4)
So let me see here.
Something ain't right here. Seisure of equipment? For writing something that yes, was bad, but was a thousand times better than opening fire?
Maybe someone should go Columbine on that high school* just so the faculty gets it. You can't take away everything. Kids need an outlet to vent. Everyone does. They're taking them away one by one and then wondering what the hell is wrong with America's Youth. Things don't escalate(sp?) by themselves. It takes a continual pressure and a lack of vent. The pressure's there, but there's no vent because no matter what you do you you're chastized and maybe even arrested.
I'm not saying what the guy did was right, I'm commenting more on the fact that the faculty (and parents, wtf is up with "not letting them go to school until he was gone?") completely overreacted.
Once. Just once I'd like to see the faculty deal with the shit these kids have to put up with and not get themselves expelled, arrested or otherwise torn apart by the rules they themselves have set out (or better, not even set out until after the fact). Yes I'm a parent and every day I see this and think to myself "My kids are getting homeschooled, fuck this, I'm not putting my kids though this."
* - No, I don't honestly mean that. Columbine was a horrible horrible tragedy and should have never happened. See, everyone says things when they're mad. It doesn't mean they mean them. Fuck even my four year old does it and understands this concept.
If It Can Be Proven True, It Cannot Be Libel (Score:4)
Oh my god.
These are going to be the most incredible court records in Utah history. I cannot be the only person imagining a Clinton Impeachment like mass subpeona'ing of anything that could prove the truth or falsity of the various claims.
"I did not have sex with that prepubescent girl. Momma says it ain't sex if we do it like that." Can't wait to start hearing that out of fifteen year old boys, on the stand, in a suit that's not big enough but "it's the good one".
What's just cruel is that this is bound to be more the work of parents than the kids themselves, and there are likely more than a few girls who--shocker of schockers--actually are sexually active who are going to have to watch a court ordered sexual inquisition brought on by their hapless parents who couldn't imagine that Their Daughters---theirs! What could they have done wrong as Parents(TM)!--would in anyway deserve such labels.
I've got the popcorn right here. This should be rather fun to watch, if your definition of fun is "watching the forces of the legal system brought to bear against a 16 year old boy who called some other kids bad names, like football players and cheerleaders never ever do."
Fug.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Double Standards (Score:4)
This reminds me of a ridiculous and stupid thing I read a while back in some columbine-reactionary-editorial. It said, and I'm paraphrasing, It's a shame that such violence happens in high school, the one place where kids are supposed to feel safe.
I read that and I thought, "What fairyland, mythical high school did this person go to!" I don't know about y'all, but high school (and middle school, too) for me was the most brutal, cruel, dehumanizing, and horrible social experience I can remember. In high school people can do things with minor repercussions that, in the adult world, are called "slander," "assault," "sexual harrassment", and "battery." Adults and legislators look on this and say, "This is just normal high school activity" and then act shocked when one of them has had enough and decides to kill some of his/her tormentors.
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has fantasized more than once during school about murdering some of his evil classmates.
So if assault, battery, sexual harrassment, and slander are "ok," then why are people having such a cow over mere libel? And when I say "ok" I mean "punished very lightly despite the severity of the crime." I once had a person tell me to my face, "I'm going to rip off your f*cking head and ram it up your g*ddamn ass, you f*cking f*ggot" and he meant every word of it. (No doubt he could have made good on his promise, too. I was a little crybaby kid in high school.) What defense does the average high school kid have against that crime? And this poor kid was arrested for calling people "drunks" and "sluts"?
So why is there a double standard? What makes libel so egregious while assault and sexual harrassment are overlooked as "typical high-school kid-stuff"?
Hmmm ... two sides to this (Score:4)
Chris Wareham
Re:Small town politics (Score:4)
Agree 100%. Read Irving Stone's "men to match my Mountains" as it is one of the few easily accessible non-censored prints of Utah history.
For me the more intresting part here is how did the school principals actually read it. The pages contained some s-words and in Utah the filterware in public schools is abolutely obligatory.
Re:Hmmm ... two sides to this (Score:4)
My suggestion is not to confuse the crime and the punishment. Should defamation be illegal and punishable? Absolutely. But if he wrote this defamation on the school blackboard, would he be barred from using chalk?
Another question to ask is whether the ramblings of a teenager against his teachers constitutes libel. If I read a page where some rambling schoolkid called his classmates sluts and his teachers drunks, I'd be less than inclined to believe what I was reading. If no-one believes it, is it still libel? I'd call it a disciplinary problem, and a reason to talk to the kid. But not a reason to have the cops confiscsate his computer.
Sluts? (Score:4)
Normally, I'd relegate this sort of post to that of a humorous troll. But, this is wonderfully applicable here. A few people, in jest, have pointed out that in a civil trial Ian could exonerate himself by proving that his statements were completely true.
Check this shit out:
Source: http://www.42.dropbear.id.au/wrd_news3. html [dropbear.id.au] (annoying javascript keeps the window on top. bastards.)
(I'm going to presume the above is true, as 170 people in high school is about right for a town of 1100 or so. I graduated with 20 and I came from a town of 300, so it seems right.)
Now, pressuming this goes to trial, couldn't Ian just hold up the list and say, "See! She really is a slut!" Actually, that's another problem in and of itself--define slut. Drunk. Incompetent. Very relative terms, giving him a lot of wiggle room. Here in North Dakota, I know quite a few people (old country Lutherans actually; listen to Garisson Keilor) who consider any woman who has sex for reasons other than procreation, or--[sarcasm]dear god forbid[/sarcasm]--marriage is a slut. This is a rather nice chink in the plaintiff's armor I'd suppose.
Thoughts?
And please check out my previous post, just a few below, with Milford High School's snail mail address. I want to see that school office innundated with mail on this one. It's the least we could do, helping out a kid so he doesn't have to go through the shit a lot of us did/do.
----
It's a kid! (Score:4)
I remember in high school some kids put out a underground newsletter that basically blasted one of the teachers at the school (they didn't agree with his politics). I was in that teachers class and these were his exact words when I asked if it was libel or slander. "Yes, but I don't care. They're just kids screwing around."
That response has been a good guide for me. Think about it for a minute. Essentially this whole thing is someone, somewhere going "They said mean things about me. I'm going to make that poopyhead pay!" Get some respect for yourself and then you won't give a rats ass if someone is saying something about you.
If it's true why do you get offended at the messenger? If it's not why do you care?
Web site vs. Web site (Score:4)
Not likely. In 21st Century America, harassment and cruelty are fine as long as you don't do it on a computer.
He was retaliating against web-based libel by a school run website, AND by the school newspaper against one of his friends. If the students responsible for that are not held to exactly the same standards then I, myself, despite the consequences will fly to Utah, walk into that school, and well... Leave the rest to the imaginations of the people involved.
I'm tired of these fucking double standards, the school officials can harass students, punish them for nothing, anything they want without retribution. And if a student says 'Teacher suchandsuch is a fucking moron.' instant suspension. And apparently if you say it on a website you get arrested. Well I'm fucking tired of it. I talk about it all the time, I lived through it in school, I watched my little brother live through it and I watched a few people not quite make it out. I'm done talking, I'm going to start doing something about it.
*Goes looking for the phone # of the local school board*
Kintanon
Re:Small town politics .. not just Utah (Score:4)
It's more of a small town thing than a Utah thing, up here in Salt Lake City, they even had a gay rodeo. (gasp!)
There's one thing that you have to understand about utah, particularily southern utah. Most of the population there is transplanted from southern california, including myself. "native" southern utahns despise the newcomers to some degreee, but it's not usually visable.
I point to the pink hair thing, I was always given shit by everyone for having long hair, and down in st george, kids are routinely suspended for coloring their hair. The school administrators go nuts on anyone who sticks out. Besides that, when you manage to piss off enough people in a small town, you're bound to get screwed. I did the same, and that's why I have over fifty moving violations on my driving record. It's all about being high profile.
How this got national attention, who knows. I read about this in the Salt Lake Tribune a couple weeks ago, so it's already old news here in Utah.
Ian did his research to avoid libel charges! (Score:5)
Here's the link: SLTrib article [tribaccess.com]
Too bad the original site isn't still up, allowing us to judge for ourselves.
Pray for us here in Utah, ok? :)
Welcome to the new net (Score:5)
So no more free speech. That outdated concept needs to go to make room for commercialism. The companies came, saw and conqured before we knew what hit us. They found a place to spread their banner ads and 'one click shopping(tm)' and all they had to do to make it ready for them is get rid of the previous tennants and their silly ideas of anonymous information and freedom of speach. Silly kids, those don't make money.
Since, for the businesses that exist on the net to florish, they need to made sure some stupid kid can't publish negative information about their company or reveal their poor trade secrets (hello, Mattel) so there has to exist some method silenceing those who stand against them.
But let's not stop there, let's made damn sure this place is politically correct too. We wouldn't want anyone offended, especially by some outcast kid. Bring in all the lawers, there are potential suits for everyone. We need to make sure this digital land mirrors our real one, and that it inherits all the flaws and problems that it's makers 'forgot' put in.
If anyone needs me, I'm going to dial into some of the old BBSes I used to frequent. Maybe see if the sprirt of the old (dead) internet still lives on there.
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't tried to contact us"
Calivn - Calvin and Hobbs
Finkployd
Not Libel -Libel checklist (Score:5)
Look for material that identifies a person or an entity. Keep in mind that it is possible to identify people or entities like corporations without actually using a name. If the material contains identifiable voices, likenesses, or descriptions of or concerning a person or a company, it could be a problem.
The material identifies a person or entity. STOP HERE if the material does not identify a person, business or other entity. You can't have a libel without someone to complain about it!
Is any identified person dead? There is little reason to be concerned with statements or other material reflecting badly on dead persons because the law only protects "the memory of the dead," giving no cause of action to decedents. So long as the material concerns only the dead person, you need not answer the rest of the questions on this form.STOP HERE if the person identified is dead.
If material identifies a living person, is it:
A private individual.
A public person.
A political person.
Would the material negatively influence a reasonable reader's opinion of the person or entity identified?
a. It would reflect badly on the character of the person or entity.
b. It could harm the reputation, diminish the esteem, respect or good will in which the person or entity's relevant community holds him, her or it.
If the material might reflect badly on character and/or harm reputation, would the harm be the result of:
An explicit statement.
An insinuation.
A sarcastic statement.
A parody or cartoon.
An opinion that implies that there are unstated defamatory facts underlying it.
Other.
There are several possible defenses to a claim of defamation, although none may apply in a particular case. Check one of the following defenses only if you are fairly certain it would apply.
The statement or other material is true.
The statement or other material is a fair report of an official or public record or proceeding.
The statement or other material is purely an expression of opinion and not an assertion of fact.
The statement or other material constitutes a fair comment - that is, a comment or opinion on a matter of public concern, for example, the use of public money, disbarment of attorneys, management of public institutions and charities, management of private companies whose activities widely affect the public (pollution, delivery of medical services, common carriage, employment practices, discrimination, etc.) or the review of books, public entertainment, sports events or scientific discoveries.
No one could reasonably interpret the statement or image to be an assertion of actual fact about the person or entity.
The statement or image can be characterized as mere words of abuse, indicating dislike for the person or entity, but does not suggest any specific charge.
The subject of the statement or image has given consent to or approved the material.
The fact that material has already been printed somewhere else is not a defense except in the narrow fair report circumstance. Republication of a libel creates another libel.
Re:What's the difference? (Score:5)
Rant Mode: On
So what is the way to deal with it???
The kid did NOT resort to violence. He couldn't go to the authorities, they were part of the problem. Remember, one of the incidents he was responding to was an attack on one of his friends by the school newspaper. So should he have walked into his school with a machine gun and a backpack full of bombs?
No.
He vented on the web. What's wrong with that? Are we going to take away all mechanisms for dealing with stress that people have and let them explode and commit suicide or mass homicide?
I'm tired of people saying 'That's not the way to handle it' and not offering a better way.
So either put up or shut the fuck up and get the fuck out. We don't need people pretending they are all holy and don't get angry and rant at people that piss them off.
The kid didn't kill anyone, he relieved his stress and made his point. I think he did the RIGHT thing by defending his friends.
He also complimented some of the teachers he thought deserved it, AND he claims he can prove all of his accusations. If he can do that then it's not Libel.
Rant Mode: Off
Kintanon
Double standards are rife everywhere. (Score:5)
Or even on a computer, as long as you do something that raises the school's profile. I remember being told in school to cut my hair, smarten my attire and cut out my slacker attitude (by teachers who were quite blatantly drunk as hell on occasion) on a regular basis, while the school (& county) champion runner/rugby player/cricketer could look like how/do what the hell he wanted (including verbally abusing the less athletically inclined). When I questioned those double standards (directly to the head teacher, no less), I was told that that was the way life could be sometimes, that he brought a lot of attention onto the school, that that was a good thing, and by the way, cut your hair, or I'll suspend you. My (admittedly childish) retaliation was to cut my hair to within a millimetre of the regulation, form a band, and use the schools' rock concert for charity as a sounding-board. 'There's only one way of life (and that's your own)' was a good starting point, and 'Killing in the name of' was a good follow-up (Although we covered it badly, the look of shock on the teachers' faces as we screeched 'F**k you, I won't do what you tell me' time after time is an image burned forever onto my mind, and raises a grin every time I think about it - I also wound up with a nice young lady that evening ;-). I got canned for it, but it felt good to make the statement. Athletic boy put a band together the following year, played Oasis covers and didn't pull. *grin*
This was in the UK at a fairly cold-shower independent school, and I believe that any child in a repressive environment should be allowed to sound off, at least once, for what they feel is right, as long as they can back up their arguments well. If I had been born 5 years later, I would probably have sounded off on the Web. I would have expected maybe detention, but arrest? I can't help but think that the powers that be are way off-base here. Those that fail to acknowledge history are doomed to repeat it. Any kid who feels that life is unfair only has to look at how the Columbine two were portrayed to know that the answer doesn't lie with Dylan and Klebold's methodology. You'll die (which sucks), You'll be hated by everyone (which sucks), and you'll make it worse for others likes you (which sucks more than anything has ever sucked before)
Use your brain, not a Beretta. And just because Utah is fairly backwater doesn't make it right. No-one should have to endure it. Only when a disillusioned kid kills themselves and others do the words 'Life's like that, deal with it' sound kind of hollow.
Criminal libel - no way (Score:5)
Civil libel, maybe. But civil libel cases have to be brought by private parties. It's also a defense in libel cases that the libelled party was a "public figure", which includes government officials generally and probably includes a school principal.
The kid may have a good case for false arrest.