Wild Wild Web

A convicted child sex offender in Ireland, identified only as "XY," was released from jail after serving half of his sentence for 15 sexual offenses committed in the 1980s. Upon his release, he discovered his photograph and threatening comments on the Facebook page "Keeping our kids safe from predators."  One of the posts said, "Put him down like an animal."

XY sued Facebook for harassment, breach of privacy, and breach of human rights, claiming that, "By publishing this material about me, the defendants are providing a vehicle for others who may have criminal intent to gain information about where I live and to stir up hatred against me."

Facebook's attorney argued that Facebook was "walking a fine line" between the rights of its users and the privacy of others. He asked, "Will it give the plaintiff any benefit to shut down this site and deprive 4,000 users of their freedom of expression, the vast amount of which is legitimate debate on sex offenders?"

While the U.K.'s High Court acknowledged that the man's name, physical appearance, criminal record, and whereabouts were already public information, the ruling "simply requires certain modest steps to be taken by the operator of a social networking site to ensure that, pending the substantive trial of this action, the plaintiff is not exposed to further conduct which I consider, to a high level of arguability, to be unlawful."

Within hours after Facebook complied with the order, a page with a similar name appeared. 

In the U.S., state laws banning sex offenders from using social networking sites are getting mixed reviews. The federal court in Nebraska struck down a state law that made it a crime for certain registered sex offenders to use social networking sites or chat rooms, and allowed monitoring of their computers and Internet usage.

But an Indiana federal court upheld a state ban on convicted sex offenders accessing social networking sites used by children because the law was narrowly drawn so that certain sex offenders are "only precluded from using web sites where online predators have easy access to a nearly limitless pool of potential victims."

One thing is clear: we have not heard the last from the courts on balancing rights of privacy against free speech, especially when dealing with the emotionally-charged issue of child abuse.

Free Speech or Online Harassment?

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to give schools guidance on where to draw the line between a student's free speech rights and online harassment. Litigants asked the Court to review decisions in three cases involving Internet speech that came to different results. Two cases involved students using the Internet to ridicule their principals, and the third case involved student-on-student online harassment.

By denying review, the Court let stand two lower court decisions that First Amendment free speech rights trump the schools' right to punish students for using social media to make derogatory statements about their principals.  And the third decision will stand upholding a school's right to suspend a student for online harassment of another student.

Free speech rights were protected where one student portrayed her middle school principal as a "hairy sex addict" and a pedophile because the claims were too outrageous to be taken seriously. In the second case, a student posted comments about a high school principal, calling him a "big steroid freak" and a drunk, but, since the student's online comments did not cause substantial disruption at school, they could not be punished by school administrators.

However, in the third case, free speech rights did not prevent a student's punishment for creating a website where she posted hateful comments about another student.  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that her "particularly mean-spirited and hateful" conduct violated school anti-bullying policies that were necessary to preserve a safe educational environment at school.

The Internet has provided an especially virulent means to bully and harass, and the Court missed an opportunity to provide school administrators with valuable insight on how to navigate these troubled waters.