Calling Internet rumor mills harmful, some move to shut sites. Defenders say free speech is at stake.

Major Variola (ret) mv at cdc.gov
Thu Apr 17 06:56:51 PDT 2003


Parents Rally to Stop 'Cyber Bullying'
                      Calling Internet rumor mills harmful, some move to
shut sites. Defenders say free speech is at stake.

                   By Erika Hayasaki and Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff
Writers

                   When Internet users log onto
http://www.schoolscandals.com and click on the
                   Beverly Hills High School link, they will find a
message calling one student a
                   "retard" who "deserves to go to hell." A posting in
the Frost Middle School
                   chat room describes a student as a "homosexual with a
pigeon-like face and a
                   penguin-like body."

                   Such name-calling and gossip about students are
common on the 3-year-old
                   Web site, similar to the crude messages scribbled
inside of school bathroom
                   stalls for decades but on a much larger scale.

                   That "cyber bullying" has an audience of tens of
thousands, and it features links
                   for chat rooms about nearly 100 Southern California
middle and high schools,
                   particularly in the San Fernando Valley. As a result,
parents and school
                   administrators are calling for the site's closure,
contending much of its content
                   is libelous and harmful.

...

                    Wendy Seltzer, a staff attorney with the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties
                   organization, said that the authors of the postings
might be held liable, but that a 1996 federal law
                   protects many Internet service providers from
lawsuits about their content. Only sites like
                   http://www.salon.com, http://www.latimes.com and
others can be sued for defamation, since they hold
                   the right to edit their content, she said.

                   The notion is that most Web hosts "don't look at all,
because if you do look, you might be held liable
                   for what your users are saying," she said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-website17apr17,1,911742.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dtodays%2Dtimes





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