So this sort of happened to me last year while in my senior year of high school.<p>A friend and I started a Facebook group called "Sleeping students of GHS" and we had people send in pictures to an email address I created and we'd upload them to the group page. Which was quite interesting because we couldn't be held responsible for actually taking the pictures.<p>Well the group went viral in a matter of a few days, first a hundred, then a few hundred, then 2-3k. And in a relatively small southern town, around 13k people, that's a pretty big deal.<p>It was crazy. I felt like Julian Assange for a couple weeks. Nervously posting things and worried about the school big dogs hunting me down. (of course this wasn't anything like WL, but the same idea.) Parents were starting to be like, "Wait, why are these students sleeping? What are the teachers doing about this?" and this in turn caused a big uproar in the school. Schools hate bad publicity. The next day I get called into the office and a couple assistant principals and a police officer were like, "Do you have permission from all these students parents to upload these pictures?" and I said, "No. I didn't think you needed it." They in turn told me that the school was liable for a law suit, yada yada, and that I need to delete it.<p>They had me login to my account in front of them and delete it. THIS WAS MY BIGGEST MISTAKE. Damn it. I was furious with myself afterwards. Lesson learned I suppose. It didn't take long for an outsider to the school to approach me and make another joint account. That way if it's outside the school they can't do anything.<p>At this point local news agencies were calling me and emailing me asking to interview. It was on the front page of newspapers. I learned that it is indeed not illegal to take pictures of minors in a public place and the school was just BS'ing me to get me to delete it. I was a little scared in that office. I was in contact with the ACLU and a digital rights lawyer in San Francisco, just in case they issued any kind of punishment toward me.<p>It went on for a couple more weeks, we even had tshirts made, and then bam, Facebook shuts it down. No notice, no warning, just bam. We get an email saying "Your page was against our ToS, sorry" and that was that. It all ended in a haze. To this day I wonder why Facebook shut it down. I tried contacting them but to no avail.
It's important to remember that rights are meaningless if they are not exercised and defended, and that often means uncomfortable placement of walls. Not every case will be as media-friendly as a 12 year old girl posting to Facebook that someone was mean to her. The Miranda decision that established the right to be told your rights when under arrest -- the right to remain silent and so forth -- well, Ernesto Miranda was found guilty of kidnapping and rape in the second trial. Not a great person.
I hope she wins. I cannot stand the things that our government are getting away with these days. It was founded with the ideal of complete personal freedom, and now it seems as though everyone is starting to go "woah woah okay okay yeah that was fun for a while but now you're all fucked."
Just out of curiosity, what do people think schools, parents, etc should do about minors and Facebook? Bullying, "naughty" pics of themselves, and just simple over the top kid drama. Facebook is public. It's not your diary. You are sharing it with your hundred "closests" friends. Rush Limbaugh calls someone a slut on the radio and people are outraged. I can imagine that kids are quite rough with each other on a daily basis.
These are certainly the first days of social networking, the law and social conventions still have a lot of catching up to do.<p>On a different note, I find it quite ironic that Facebook forbids children under 13 from opening accounts, while encouraging behavior ("I like this!") most suitable for their age spectrum.
How on earth did they think this was okay? These days that might actually be the same as asking someone for their diary.<p>Or at least if they judged you from what was written in your blog or something like that.
"The district is confident that once all facts come to light, the district's conduct will be found to be reasonable and appropriate."<p>I can't imagine what these "facts" are, but I will reserve judgement until I've heard them.
Pathetic. I'm sure the school would not have asked someone if they thought they could walk all over them.<p>There is no way anyone could coerce me to hand something over like that (and I don't even use Facebook much!)
This happened to a page that my former classmates made too. It was made up of pictures of people in the community that they think weren't helping. It didn't get much popularity though. But it got shut down by facebook too. They later on found out that several people reported them using the "report/block" button. These people are relatives of the people that they posted funny topics about. They couldn't do anything about it.<p>On a related note, maybe the people who deserve to be reported are the likes of Justin Bieber. See
Bieber tweets a phone number, except the last digit. Real people driven mad
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3690118" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3690118</a>
>I hope she wins.<p>I hope to see the day when every headline <i>[subject] sues [government entity] over [grievance]</i> parses to something other than <i>[subject] sues taxpayers over [grievance]</i>