Dangerous Rulings: Georgia Court Says Parents May Be Liable For What Their Kids Post On Facebook
from the bad-ideas dept
A Georgia appeals court has said that parents of a 7th grader can be held liable for what their son posted on Facebook. At issue is a Facebook post where the son created a fake Facebook profile of a classmate of his, posting distorted images of her to make her look fat (ah, junior high schoolers...) and then including "profane and sexually explicit comments on the page depicting her as racist and promiscuous." Alerted to this, the kid's school suspended him, and his parents grounded him. However, the Facebook page stayed up for 11 months. The parents of the girl then sued the parents of the boy, claiming that they had "breached a duty to supervise their child's use of a computer and an Internet account" and, further, that they had "breached a duty to remove defamatory content existing on their property." The court rejected that second argument, but found the first argument at least reasonable enough to proceed to a jury.Part of the issue is that, after finding out about the fake page, the boy's parents, beyond grounding him, didn't look into what the page was, and where it was. The court argues that this could be negligent, because having been informed of the problematic page their son created, they may have had a responsibility to then monitor that page.
In this case, it is undisputed that Dustin used a computer and access to an Internet account improperly, in a way likely to cause harm, and with malicious intent. The Ahearns contend that they had no reason to anticipate that Dustin would engage in that conduct until after he had done so, when they received notice from the school that he had been disciplined for creating the unauthorized Facebook profile. Based on this, they contend that they cannot be held liable for negligently supervising Dustin’s use of the computer and Internet account. The Ahearns’ argument does not take into account that, as Dustin’s parents, they continued to be responsible for supervising Dustin’s use of the computer and Internet after learning that he had created the unauthorized Facebook profile. While it may be true that Alex was harmed, and the tort of defamation had accrued, when even one person viewed the false and offensive postings, it does not follow that the Athearns’ parental duty of reasonable supervision ended with the first publication.But that seems problematic on any number of levels. There is no indication that the boy continued to post to the page after being disciplined for it. So there wasn't any issue with the parents' ongoing supervision of his computer and internet usage. The idea that they could retroactively be held liable because once they found out about it they only punished him and didn't go further to find and delete the page he created seems awfully troubling. And that's before even getting to the issue of why the liability should be put on the parents anyway. There's this myth out there that parents should supervise any and all computer/internet usage. Not only is that impossible, it's also a bad idea. Yes, parents should help kids learn to use the internet, including some early supervision, but part of learning to do something is learning to do it on your own. That means teaching them about risks and how to deal with them, and encouraging them to ask questions or raise concerns if they find them -- but it shouldn't mean watching over their shoulder every moment online.
This kind of ruling doesn't necessarily mean that parents across Georgia need to immediately start spying on their kids' surfing activities, but it does suggest -- ridiculously -- that upon notification of a problem, they suddenly have a responsibility to monitor and clean up any messes their kids caused. That's very dangerous thinking.
However, there is another interesting angle, which lawyer Marc Randazza has suggested on his blog, that the parents should make use of CDA Section 230 to claim they're immune from liability. Remember, the whole point of CDA 230 is that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." And yet, this ruling effectively holds the parents responsible for the speech of their son. CDA 230 is mostly used to protect service providers from liability, but the law clearly also applies to "users." As Randazza notes:
It is without dispute that the content was provided by another person, namely the son. The son, therefore, is the liable party – not the parents – and under the CDA, any claim to the contrary appears to be barred.He points to one case, in California that seems at least marginally analogous:
In Delfino v. Agilent Techns. Inc., 145 Cal. App. 4th 790, 806 (2006), the California court of appeals found that when an employee used the employer’s computer network to send threatening messages, the employer was not liable. In that case, the court held that although the defendant-employer merely acted as the provider of the computer system, the plaintiff’s tort claims in essence sought to hold the employer liable for the publication of the threatening messages. Id. Therefore, the employer was immune under § 230.Randazza further notes, in a footnote, that the rulings in two of Prenda/AF Holdings failed lawsuits, claiming "negligence" for leaving WiFi opened, further reinforce the idea that Section 230 should apply in cases involving things like "negligence" for enabling the actions of others. It's too bad the lawyers for the parents either chose not to raise this argument, or perhaps didn't even realize it was open to them.
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Filed Under: appeals court, defamation, georgia, kids, liability, negligence, parents, section 230, social media
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Not only should parents be held responsible for the behavior of their children but those children should also be held responsible.
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Parents SHOULD be held liable for their children's misdeeds. It leads to better parenting.
If he defamed her and they neglected to remove it, they should be held responsible. Maybe then they will take Junior's bullying seriously.
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They basically tell you "Go pound sand!"
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Do you have kids? Do you have any idea how wrong you are? Thinking parents have the ability to control their kids actions is pure ignorance.
If he defamed her and they neglected to remove it, they should be held responsible. Maybe then they will take Junior's bullying seriously.
They did take it seriously. They grounded him. Not removing the Facebook page shouldn't be their issue.
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Sooner or later they suss out that you doing that is a crime in and of itself and you are using hyperbole, i.e. empty threats, so they dismiss you.
Better thing to do is to tell children why they should not do X or Y very early and unless they are causing PHYSICAL injury to someone else (key term there, the P word) or damage to PHYSICAL property not their own?
There is nothing wrong with 'harassing' someone morally.
Yes, it is dickish in the extreme but it is not something that we should be criminalizing unless you want those laws to be WIDELY overstretched, considering how vague the politicians love to make these laws.
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Whut?! Sorry, but "only those who can afford to sue can get this dealt with" isn't fair. If people believe and act on the lies being told, what then? This happened to me so it's a bit of a sore spot.
Parents are not able to continuously monitor Junior, I understand that, but they should keep an eye on him and such incidents should be monitored by all involved. The onus on removing the page should fall squarely on Junior, of course, but the parents should at least be given some guidance on what to do and assistance in enforcing disciplinary measures if required.
This kind of thing is not okay.
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Facebook could be contacted and I'm sure that, given the circumstances they would remove it. But it's virtually impossible to know where the kid has been meddling. And chances are he set up the account and forgot about it. I've done it a whole lot when I were younger even though never while faking others identities. Throw the first rock those who never set up an anonymous account to flame or troll.
In any case the ruling is troubling indeed.
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> Parents SHOULD be held liable for their children's misdeeds. It leads to better parenting.
All the "better parenting" in the world won't stop some kids from bad behaviour. It's that "free will" thing all humans are blessed with.
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For example, a child injuring another in their first ever schoolyard fight does not cause his parents to be liable for that behavior. However, if it's the fifth time he's injured another student, then the parents are liable.
In this case the parents are certainly not liable for the original creation of the Facebook account. But they very well may be liable for the continuing activity (the account kept accepting friends and posting things) given that the school informed them of the situation.
Finally, the judge didn't say they are liable, only that they could be, and that the question should be settled by a jury. Sadly TechDirt falls into the "horrible reporting about legal issues" trope, which is depressingly common when talking about motions for summary judgement.
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With the EASY ability to fake being someone else today on the internet? I would not trust that X was done by person Y unless you had a videotape of the person putting up the page in question.
IP addresses? Too easy faked. MAC Addresses? Ditto.
Let's not even bring up TOR, I2P, etc.
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At that point they're not liable for anything. But they have a responsibility going forward to take reasonable steps to make sure their child doesn't do it again. Or keep doing it, in this case.
I'm not sure what your point is about "it's easy to fake being someone". No one is disputing that the kid did this. He confessed to the school.
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Parents can no more be held liable for the actions or inactions of what their child may or may not have done (whether the child has done it 1 or x times) then a friend who knows there other friend was doing something and they didn't stop them.
There is no Duty, there is NO Neighbourhood duty either. If there is a duty or the court claims there is then the whole system then becomes unequitable since then Parents should be absolutely immune from anything they need to do to stop this or any other behaviour once 'known' about.
Oh and until a court determines (not the school) that the page in question was defamatory then there is NO foreknowledge of a defamatory statement, only an alleged defamatory statement. Therefore your s230 should absolutely be a defense as well.
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That isn't even possible. They could have deleted the account and changed the password, and even done the Parent Over Shoulder thing whenever the kid was on line. That wouldn't have stopped a determined kid from creating a new page. All he needed to do was borrow another kid's phone, or find an unoccupied computer somewhere.
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Yes, there is only so much one can do, but it sounds like they didn't exhaust (or even come close to) taking all reasonable steps.
Sure, if you at home put up a filtering proxy so the kid can't access facebook, or prevent him entirely from using a computer, he could still go to the library or use a school computer or go to his mates house. But at least they would have tried reasonable steps.
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There are vast hordes of really nasty little kids rampaging around the internet flinging obscenities and racial slurs right and left. Parents need to wake up to the fact that their little "angels" may be evil demons when left unsupervised online.
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However, if the parents do not know, as was the case here, they should NOT be held liable for what they did not know about.
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No, actually it's not. There are some cases where they are, but most actions are the kids' responsibility, not the parents.
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Now, in a criminal case you would right, parents normally are not held liable for their kids except under extreme circumstances.
The big question this case leaves unanswered is why on earth did the parents of the bullied kid not simply ask Facebook to remove the fake profile? They are usually very swift about these things. Why should they be allowed to sue the other kid's parents 11 months later, when they had this avenue open to them the entire time?
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So why hasn't the state instituted parens patriae proceedings to intervene & even remove these little demons from their negligent parents? hmmm?
And parents are ONLY responsible in highly exigent circumstances where there is serious criminal offenses that they have known about and INTENTIONALLY have not done anything about.
Before quoting legal principles or doctrines it is necessary to know the elements of those principles and put them into context of the case at hand.
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That is the whole point of growing up, you begin to learn that there are things you really shouldn't be doing.
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It is without dispute that the content was provided by another person, namely the son. The son, therefore, is the liable party – not the parents – and under the CDA, any claim to the contrary appears to be barred.
I don't think this argument means much really. Georgia Code § 51-2-3 states that the parents or legal guardians are liable up to $10,000 for willful or malicious acts of minors anyways.
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Personally, I think the Columbine parents should have been put in jail and/or $150,000 fine for endangering their children (since they ended up, you know, dead from self-inflicted wounds from the guns they had in the house).
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It is basically expecting parents to be mindreaders and seers with their children, something that NO ONE is with ANYONE.
Those laws go too far towards the stupidity of "We have to hold someone responsible and since under the legal doctrine we cannot hold the children responsible, we will go after the adults!"
There are some times where while the children cannot be held legally responsible and fined, they should be put under court-ordered supervision if the parents were negligent. In this case, I do not know how you can say the parents were negligent.
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If the guns were stolen from the neighbor would you fine them too?
Only seems fair to me.
If some kid steals your car and runs over a baby in a carriage, we should fine you for letting you car kill a baby.
What ever happened to personal responsibility?
I think it's perfectly fine that this defaming facebook posting child is sued.
If he is ordered to pay a fine, great!
The parents should be liable to pay the fine levied on that child UNTIL such time that the child is emancipated. At that time any remaining balance of the fine is solely the responsibility of the child.
I do not agree that the parents should be sued for the action of their children.
But I do agree that they should be held jointly responsible for an judgments until the child becomes an adult.
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Section 230 trumps such a law when it comes to speech, so nope.
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Ok, fair enough.
Georgia also has a law that says that you are liable for torts of your children. (§ 51-2-2)
My argument is that even if Section 230 prevails and the child is found liable the parents are still liable anyways.
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I'm sure you've got a big brain in your skull there, but American law is a tangled jungle the size of Brazil, and no brain is that big. So in the face of such a colossal structure of knotted legalese, a little humility might be in order.
I believe it twas the great Lisa Simpson who so eloquently said: "It's better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt".
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Take a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL9V9feZ75k
My point was simply that, when faced with this reality, it would be prudent to leave an out when making assertions even when you're 100% sure you're correct. So instead of "so nope" you might say "as far as my understanding goes". Or instead of "No, it's actually not", you might say "I don't think that's the case". And the reason for that is that no one can fully understand or know the law.
The legal system is 10 billion words wide and 200 years deep. When staring into that abyss, i'd argue, it's important to be humble.
As for the ad hominem attacks, i'm not sure where you're seeing those. I wasn't attacking you, nor was i trying to refute your argument. I was simply trying to point out that it's impossible for anyone, including you, to fully know the law and you might want to act accordingly as credibility and respect are fleeting.
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Eh. When I have an opinion I don't hedge. I state my opinion. I find people who feel the need to hedge every statement are generally pushing bullshit.
Sorry.
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It is a fact. It's why State AGs keep trying to get Section 230 amended so that it doesn't trump state laws. Because right now, it *absolutely* does. No questions asked.
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20130619/01031623524/more-details-emerge-as- states-attorneys-general-seek-to-hold-back-innovation-internet.shtml
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You didn't state it as opinion but as a fact,
So, either you are stating an opinion or a fact, which is it?
Either way, the AC was simply pointing out, what you regularly point out, that the interactions between various legislative and legal results are uncertain, vague and arcane and that nobody knows it all in full detail. The appearance of what some piece of legislation says can, in the end, hinge on some other piece of legislation in another venue, or even the interpretation of the words used within the legislation. We can see enough of this rubbish going on in the various courts, state legislatures and at the federal level. Weasels (politicians, lawyers and law enforcement) will try and often can find a way to get out of the consequences of what the various laws appear to say.
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The law was written by rich psycho's to protect their spoils nothing else.
Justice is available only by purchase, if money is not exchanged, justice is never done.
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If anything, I would have considered his remarks careful chiding to be careful.
He has praised you but has also given you a warning.
Don't get offended.
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If a 14 year old kid engaged in criminal harassment on one of my kids, I would ask their parents do what they can to make it stop, and I think that reasonably extends to something like a website if that was the source of the harassment.
As parents they should at least show that they attempted to make contact w/Facebook as the parents to discuss their options. IMO, a parent would be falling down on the job if they were told that their child was being a jerk on Facebook and didn't even bother to look at the activity in question.
I think that it's perfectly reasonable to consider parental liability when their dependants are guilty of a criminal act. So I guess at this point, I think what really matters is if the kid is actually guilty of a crime or not.
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A law that says you must behave in a civilized manor is something completely different.
Just apply your logic to speech issues. Just becomes I should teach my child not to call Obama a poopy head, doesn't mean it's okay for their to be a law that says my child can't call Obama a poopy head and I have to do something to stop it.
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What the child did here was ruled defamation in a court of law. There are laws that you must not lie about others in an attempt to harm them.
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Plenty of laws are about holding people accountable for engaging in uncivilized behavior. What's important in this case is the fact the person being accused of being uncivilized is a child, and there will always be some connection between the acts of a child and the responsibility of the parent to deal with it.
Remeber what is in question is the allegation of a crime. If the kid is found guilty of a crime, then the parents have a responsibility (i.e. liability) to make remedies as needed.
To carry your metaphor:
If my kid called the POTUS a poopyhead once, he's just expressing an opinion.
If my kid used their mobile phone to make threating calls to the White House for a month straight, and after being told about it, I don't take their phone away maybe I'm on the hook for something too.
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To then try to punish them for not being frigging SEERS is insanity in my opinion and that of my lawyer boss, who would GLADLY take this case if he had a license to practice law in that part of the country to hammer it through that "Parents know about it before the child does it or during? They can be held responsible. Parents did not know about it before the child does it or during? Parents cannot be held responsible!"
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err no, that is NOT what they are being (potentially) punished for.
They are being punished for what happened AFTER they had been notified.
AFTER they were notified they took insufficient actions to prevent ongoing harm.
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If you're out in public and your child shits all over the floor, is it "dangerous thinking" to suggest that you clean it up?
I'm normally in complete agreement with this site's view on free speech issues, but for this one I think you've gone off the deep end. Parents are responsible for their children, in general. I agree that holding a parent liable for stupid things their child does on the internet is a bad idea, but that's not the issue, and no one is claiming it is. (Although for some reason you spend a lot of words talking about it.)
The issue is whether parents are responsible for cleaning up after their children, and whether they can be held liable for not doing so. This doesn't seem all that dangerous, depending on the standard of negligence required. If we assume a "good faith" attempt is sufficient, then I'm completely fine with this precedent.
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How Facebook savvy are the parents?
Are we now legally required to know how Facebook works?
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The court didn't say the child defamed another child. The school suspended the kids and then the parents grounded him. The lawsuit against the parents came later, and wasn't for defamation.
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My point, with these walls of text, is that the judge carefully considered the relevant case law and the situation at hand, and he concluded that it's not impossible that the parents could be held liable for their child's behavior. But you write about legal issues all the time, I'm sure I don't need to also quote the high standards for granting summary judgement, or the equivalently low standards for denying it.
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The judge should only have held that the parents were liable if it was proven criminal behaviour or PROVEN upon balance tortuous behaviour that caused and CONTINUES to cause significant harm. Otherwise the responsibility ends and again as I stated previously the school should also be held liable even if via a nominal percentage.
Also defining 'dangerous activity' is VERY arbitrary in this case and does not rely on the factors present in the cases the judge and yourself cited
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But that is what's happened isn't it? This wasn't a sentencing hearing or a guilty verdict by the judge. The judge has allowed the case to go forward for a jury to make that determination.
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Just as the parent is liable for the actions of their children when they destroy private property, steal from a store or break a window, so are they responsible when their children commit an act that harms another person.
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Until then? Sorry, not going to be held responsible. I have already seen cases in Maryland where once the parents of X 'delinquent' child proved they did all they could? They were ABSOLVED of responsibility for their child's actions and court cases against them were thrown out.
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This is so incredibly not true.
Just as the parent is liable for the actions of their children when they destroy private property, steal from a store or break a window, so are they responsible when their children commit an act that harms another person.
You're wrong.
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http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/parents-civil-liability-a-childs-acts.htm
What' s really interesting is their example of parental liabilities being upheld in court happened in Geogia too.
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2. The original claim was that parents are responsible, period.
There are *certain* situations in which parents *can* be responsible for *some* actions, given *certain* conditions. That's way far away from "It's the responsibility of every parent that they are responsible for the behavior of their children until they turn the legal age in their state" as stated in the original comment.
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A Point of Dispute
At issue is a Facebook post where the son created a fake Facebook profile of a classmate of his, posting distorted images of her to make her look fat (ah, junior high schoolers...) and then including "profane and sexually explicit comments on the page depicting her as racist and promiscuous." Alerted to this, the kid's school suspended him, and his parents grounded him. However, the Facebook page stayed up for 11 months. (emphasis mine)
Going by the above statement, the parents were informed of the harassment, and unless we are not being told something, would that disclosure have to include the fact that it happened over Facebook? Even if it didn't come up, wouldn't a reasonable parent ask for details?
In other words, there's no mind to read. It sounds to me like the parents were not only told what happened, but how it happened. All we can guess, is that it never occurred to them to do anything about it, even though it was part of the problem.
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Near impossible unless you are a police organization is how I put it in an earlier post and that is quite accurate.
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Though the thought of the parent simply wrangling the sign-on information from the little punk has a certain appeal to it. I mean since the kid was already grounded, there would be plenty of time for meaningful parent-child talks about being a decent human being...
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They can produce said evidence, yes? You know, maybe even a single email to Facebook support outlining the situation and asking for the removal, with Facebook's reply to go get knotted?
Or perhaps even better, they can produce evidence they instructed their child (the owner of the account) to go and delete the account, but he refused? That would also probably help them out. Because at least they tried.
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There is no mention in the appeals court judgement about attempts on the Boston's part to get Dustin's fake page removed beyond the school action.
If it was that hurtful, for that long, they would have done something more than spontaneously file suit.
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"What's that Jimmy? You have a court mandate to do something? Well, let's forget about it for a year and do nothing."
Not a recipe for success.
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Where is the court order mandating removal?
"What's that Jimmy? You have a court mandate to do something? Well, let's forget about it for a year and do nothing."
There was no such court mandate.
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(I feel safe making this claim because I notice that, as far as the law of negligence goes, even Randazza doesn't have a problem with how this case went).
I also don't read the CDA quite as liberally as Randazza does. If I was on the other side of that file, I'd argue that an action for negligent supervision of a child does not "treat the defendant as a publisher or speaker of information", and so section 230 does not apply. But I'm quite happy to concede that Randazza knows far more about that topic than I do. (Us Canadian lawyers needn't concern ourselves with such things).
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"I'm sorry your Honor but little Amy is just impossible to control unless we keep her in a cell."
Making parents responsible is an stupid idea, the only way children will learn is if they are held responsible, and feel the consequences of their actions.
Shifting that to the parents accomplishes nothing.
This case is about parents and their parasite attorney trying to extort money, instead of teaching their daughter how to overcome this on her own.
Sadly they are likely to win.
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Confused
Or maybe he could've handed the login info over to the girl he was hassling, along with cooperating in changing that login info using whatever e-mail verifications were necessary on his part to complete the job.
Based on all the lively discussions in the comments, I'm sure I must be missing something really obvious here...
Did he clear the account and then repost stuff later?
Did he lie about clearing it, and nobody bothered to confirm?
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There is some logic to this
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Do you have children?
A vast number of our problems these days are the direct result of lazy parents who want someone else to take their responsibilities.
I don't deny that many parents are bad parents and lazy, but it's bullshit to claim that parents are responsible for the actions of their kids. I recommend reading the book Far From the Tree to educate you.
Kids are their own people and often do things contrary to what their parents wish or taught them. Plenty of parents who raised kids under identical conditions have "good" kids and "bad" kids. And blaming the parents for their kids actions is just pure ignorance.
Mike and others here who defend such actions are part of that problem. Disgusting.
I'd argue that anyone who blames someone for the actions of another is the truly disgusting one.
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That's because you haven't thought it through. If i train a child to be a murderer, and the child then goes and murders someone, guess what? I'm to blame.
Most people don't understand how culture and influence work. All those people in WW2 Germany who did those horrible things were acting under the influence of a culture ruled by hatemongers.
If you disagree, and argue that they were all just innately bad apples and that if you had been there (from birth) you wouldn't have made the same choices as them, then you're assuming that you have some innate goodness inside you that none of them had which would have steered you away from such actions. This mentality falls headlong into the black hole of the bias blind spot, and it lays bare the privileged perch from which you sit and view the world.
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Yes, you are responsible for everything your child does while he/she is under your care. That's part of being a parent. If you're not willing to accept that, don't breed.
For the record, you're distorting this case for some reason. These parents in Georgia KNEW of the Facebook profile and yet did nothing for months. Their child had already been prosecuted for the offense. Efforts by the plaintiff to have the profile removed were ignored by the parents, so the only recourse was to sue them to get them to act. These claims that it is too difficult to get a profile deleted off Facebook are specious, at best. I guarantee their child knows how to remove a profile in less than 5 minutes.
Grow up and become a parent and stop abdicating YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES.
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I made no such response. And, I would suggest that you suggesting I'm a bad parent based solely on a comment on the internet speaks much greater volume about your analytical abilities than my parenting skills. My kids are doing just great, thanks.
Yes, you are responsible for everything your child does while he/she is under your care. That's part of being a parent. If you're not willing to accept that, don't breed.
This is neither legally, nor morally, sensible. Parenting under such a belief is a great way to make sure your kids never learn to take responsibility. Kids are individual actors with their own motivations. Parents should be teaching and educating and preparing kids. But they are simply NOT responsible for all actions of their children.
Continuing to push that line of thinking encourages enabling kids to abdicate their own responsibility.
These parents in Georgia KNEW of the Facebook profile and yet did nothing for months.
Not true. They grounded their son. At no point did they know that it was magically their responsibility to delete the profile.
Their child had already been prosecuted for the offense.
Suspended by the school and grounded by the very same parents. Not "prosecuted."
Efforts by the plaintiff to have the profile removed were ignored by the parents, so the only recourse was to sue them to get them to act.
Only course of action? You lack imagination.
Grow up and become a parent and stop abdicating YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES
I am a parent. I have not abdicated my responsibilities. But I also know that kids are independent beings with their own brains, and not automatons run by their parents.
I once again, highly recommend you read "Far from the Tree" and then come back and say whether or not parents are responsible for the actions of their kids.
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True Liability belongs to School/Government
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7th graders and Contractual Law
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