from:alt.conspiracy As, always, Caveat Lector Om K ----- Click Here: <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/features/00/06/01/1526235.shtml">Slas hdot | Criminal Libel, Free Speech And The �</A> ----- Criminal Libel, Free Speech And The Net Posted by JonKatz on Monday June 05, @10:30AM from the free-speech-online-meets-Utah dept. Last month, a 16-year-old old Utah teenager published vulgar and offensive comments about some of his classmates and school administrators on a Web site. His computer was seized by police, his files and e-mail extracted and analyzed; he was jailed in a juvenile detention center and then sent out of the state. Local officials say they may charge him with criminal libel. Copyright and patent lawsuits online, make some room. Here comes libel (Read More). 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 copy right 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. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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