Abusive MySpace page draws principal’s lawsuit
Still think today’s kids are alright? Still think your child is a little angel and would never bully someone? Need more proof that kids today have zero respect for adults and absolutely no regard for authority.
Read about Colony High School principal Cyd Duffin who had a fake MySpace page created about her by students. She tried to sue MySpace, but it was tossed on the grounds that the website would provide all information it had on the creator of the page… which is still unknown.
The article looks at several cases of the same type of situation and leads into the 1st Amendment argument.
Look, I love free speech as much as the next guy, but people have to stop standing behind it every time someone says something stupid. By stupid I really mean slanderous and defamatory. Setting up a MySpace page in someone else’s name isn’t free speech, it is libel and slander and completely wrong.
What’s worse, it’s the parents’ fault – for not knowing how to raise a civil child and not know what their child is doing online. This is another reason parents actually do need to monitor what their kids are doing online… and that’s where our PC Pandora computer monitoring software comes in.
Here’s the article; it’s a great read. Please enjoy….
April 4, 2009
Abusive MySpace page draws principal’s lawsuit
By ZAZ HOLLANDER, Anchorage Daily NewsWASILLA — Colony High School principal Cyd Duffin doesn’t do MySpace.
So other people had to tell Duffin last October that a fake MySpace page appeared in her name — a page depicting the principal as a drug-using racist with a sexually transmitted disease who insults disabled students and likes books about pornography, anarchy and the Ku Klux Klan.
Among the tipsters: a local guy who originally wanted a date — the fake profile identified the married 52-year-old Duffin as single — but ultimately called the school because something about the page didn’t seem right.
Last month, Duffin filed a civil lawsuit for defamation and invasion of privacy in Los Angeles County Superior Court against MySpace Inc. plus others responsible for the page whose names she doesn’t yet know.
She said the personal stuff made her sick, but it was the insults against students that motivated the suit.
“Really the issue that was distressing for me was the portrayal of Colony High School as not being a place that embraces and respects and cherishes our student minorities and our students with disabilities,” Duffin said. “Go ahead and hit me, but don’t hit my kids.”
According to the complaint filed March 19, the prank page made defamatory statements about hearing-impaired students and the racial composition of students at Colony.
Duffin is seeking damages to be determined at trial based on damage to her reputation, according to the complaint.
Her attorney said this week the court dismissed MySpace from the case. Duffin’s L.A.-based attorney, Jim Kawahito, said he requested the dismissal after the company agreed to cooperate by turning over records regarding the creation of the fake page.
At this point, the number and identities of the defendants remain unknown. Duffin has won several awards, including Alaska’s principal of the year. She also was the target of an attempted no-confidence vote from Colony faculty in 2005. Votes were never tallied, and the district brought in a facilitator to resolve hard feelings.
“This lawsuit should help us obtain information about the individuals who made the defamatory comments, and our client intends to hold them accountable through this action or otherwise,” Kawahito wrote in an e-mail.
A MySpace representative did not return calls for comment. The site requires users sign a terms of service agreement. Among them: no phony names or harassment of other MySpace members.
A section of a 1996 federal law, the Communications Decency Act, protects providers from being sued over content posted by users.
GAG TRIGGERS DRIVE FOR NEW LAWS
Even without the involvement of one of the world’s largest social networking sites, the lawsuit still makes for a heck of a story.
For one thing, Duffin let the high school newspaper write about the whole thing.
The Knightly News broke the news in December with a long front-page story describing the facts of the case as well as student reaction ranging from “disturbing” to “sad” and “terrible.” It also put in a more opinionated bid for justice: “Hopefully the person/persons who created this will be prosecuted accordingly and face the consequences they deserve.”
Whoever created the “phony Duffin” sent MySpace friend requests to dozens of Colony students, according to the story by student Shelby McCormick. Forty accepted.
“Their friendship plastered their own photos on a MySpace profile that profanely depicts Duffin as a bi-sexual, drug user who hates minorities,” McCormick wrote.
The story includes photos lifted from the fake page, which has since been taken down. Duffin’s smiling face — a school district photo — beams out, superimposed over images of starving African children (they can “find their own food gosh darnit”) across a city street from a banner reading, “Relax It’s Just Sex.”
The paper also reported that Colony students two years ago created a role-playing game about a virtual Colony where players targeted Mormon students.
Duffin, who said she’s approved previous stories about controversial topics like birth control, said she couldn’t refuse when the paper approached her last fall, before she filed the lawsuit.
Media Law Resource Center staff attorney Eric Robinson was “very impressed” with the way the article referenced the MySpace page instead of glossing over the details, and with Duffin’s approval of the coverage. The nonprofit center monitors free-speech issues.
“Not all high school principals share her concern about the First Amendment,” Robinson said.
REAL LIFE STRESS
While federal law prohibits Internet fraud, some say Duffin’s case proves Alaska needs to join other states that have made cyber-bullying a crime or amended harassment statutes to include online communication.
The Alaska Association of Secondary School Principals hopes the Legislature makes it a crime to impersonate somebody on the Internet.
Right now, under Alaska statute, criminal impersonation is defined as damaging someone’s financial reputation by using his ID or access device without permission — a felony — or assuming another’s identity to commit a crime, obtain a benefit, or defraud somebody, a misdemeanor.
In the Duffin case, the lack of specific laws kept law enforcement officials from investigating the people behind the fake profile, according to a resolution passed unanimously in mid-February by the principals’ association.
The people who post fake Web sites might see them as just mischievous pranks, but they cause real-life stress, said Andre Layral, executive director of the Fairbanks-based association.
“Any time either students or former students can perpetrate this kind of offense it is terribly disruptive to the orderly learning environment in the school,” Layral said. “The lack of language in current laws has really hampered prosecution.”
The association is working with Sen. Joe Paskvan, D-Fairbanks, to introduce legislation that would expand harassment laws to include digital and electronic attacks, especially when the harassment targets school staff.
Paskvan’s office has drafted some preliminary language but nothing official, aide Jeff Stepp said. No legislation is scheduled for introduction at this point, he said.
FREE SPEECH OR SMEAR CAMPAIGN?
Students have hurled insults at teachers and principals for decades. But the Internet has raised the level of insult from crude blackboard drawings to posts potentially available to scores of people who sign on to blogs or social networking sites.
Duffin’s lawsuit is one of more than 200 filed against bloggers in recent years, according to a database administered by the Media Law Resource Center, headquartered in New York City.
Several resemble Duffin’s, including one filed in 2006 by an assistant principal in Texas who sued two students and their parents after they posted a fake MySpace page that appeared to be hers and contained lewd remarks and referred to her as a lesbian. The case was dismissed.
In 2007, a Pennsylvania principal sued four former students, alleging they created a fake MySpace page that portrayed him as a sex-obsessed drunkard. The school suspended one of the students, which a federal judge later found unconstitutional. The principal last fall dropped claims against the three other students after a judge ruled he wasn’t entitled to damages; appeals continue on the case involving the suspended student, according to several databases.
How, scholars ask, does the legal system protect a student’s First Amendment right to free speech, while also protecting teachers and principals whose reputations have been unfairly trashed online, or worse?
Different courts have adopted different standards of proof for school officials trying to “unmask” anonymous students in cases like Duffin’s, said David L. Hudson Jr., with the First Amendment Center, a nonprofit based in Nashville, Tenn. Another hazy issue is a school’s right to punish students for cyber-based incidents if the student posted the offending material at home, not on campus, Hudson said.
“It’s not a well-defined line,” he said. “It’s something courts are working out right now.”
