MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Wed, 11 Oct 2006

Talk about a potentially chilling lawsuit ...

Attorney Eric J. Sinrod says a recent case could ultimately make parents legally liable for the Internet misconduct of their kids.

(link) [CNET]

Update: Here's a whole USA Today article on the dangers faced by bloggers from this kind of nonsense.

/Politics | 2 writebacks | permanent link

On 10/12/2006 07:18:59
Bjorngrímnir wrote

Oh, no - you mean parents might be legally and financially encouraged to stop letting their kids run rampant and unsupervised across the Internet? Please, say it isn't so :o

On 10/12/2006 07:54:37
Dave H wrote

well...

I think it really means that parents will be held legally and financially accountable for what their children *say* on a web forum or other venue - such as the comments section of this blog. A "brick and mortar" analogy would be the caricatures that kids draw of their teachers: I remember that we lovingly referred to our high school principal as "The Onion", because he had a bit of a pot belly with dangly little legs. Several cartoonish drawings of him were floated around the cafeteria on a nearly daily basis, often with, er, commentary attached. Were this suit allowed to proceed, parents would be held legally liable for "defamation" if a lunchroom monitor were to intercept such documents, even if the parents had never seen the drawings or read the commentary. That's a dangerous precedent, friend! The end result would be that "the children" wouldn't be allowed to run rampart with pen and paper - or any communication tool. What we would be effectively communicating to them would be "Just shut up! Don't say anything - don't question authority, don't make jokes about power! We parents need to review your every thought and word to insure it's appropriate." In such a case we might as well cut to the chase and just repeal the First Amendment. Be well, Dave H.

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MacRaven
Dave Haxton's Weblog
Musings, Reflections, Rants and Comments from a Hoosier Heathen husband, father, grandfather, farmer and software engineer. There's really only one of me ...

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