I would be very interested in hearing opinions from the State Attorney
General's office on this. I don't understand what I'm reading hear and
I'd like to have some statements that could be understood by teachers
and parents that would apply to student and employee use of the Internet
in public schools via a state owned network. Would anyone else find that
useful? Is anyone listening who could facilitate that?
Leslie
Leslie J. Flanders
Director of Technology
Scott County Schools
Georgetown, Kentucky
[log in to unmask]
_______________________________
"We must be the change we want to see in the world." -Ghandi
>----------
>From: Bill Stilwell
>Sent: Monday, March 17, 1997 10:24 PM
>To: KYDTC Discussion List
>Subject: Re: Posting rules, flaming, hostility on lists
>
>This discussion of first and 14th Amendment responsibilities is useful
>as we wrestle with AUPs
>
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>Karen Strauss <[log in to unmask]> said that she is ...
>
>> looking for some suggestions on how I an tell the people on the list that
>> there are no First Amendment privileges on my list because it is a
>> privately run and privately funded enterprise without alienating the people
>> that I want to keep on the list.
>
>Here is a post from the Cyberlaw workshop, written by three college law
>professors, that addresses this very issue. It is a tad bit long (and I
>left a pretty big tail on the end of this), but it really does resolve a
>lot of issues that all of us have had to face at one time or another ...
>
>
> CYBERSPACE LAW FOR NON-LAWYERS
>
> Topic: Free Speech: The First Amendment
> Applies Only to the Governement
>
> (Number 2 of 20 on the topic FREE SPEECH)
>
> E-Mail Number: 41
>
> Date Posted: 16 October 1996
>
>
> * * * * * * * * *
>
> FREE SPEECH 2:
> THE FIRST AMENDMENT APPLIES ONLY TO THE GOVERNMENT
>
> The first few words of the First Amendment are "Congress
> shall make no law . . . ." The Bill of Rights was
> originally meant to apply only to the federal government,
> not to the states or to private organizations.
>
> The Fourteenth Amendment, which says that "No State shall .
> . . deny any person . . . liberty . . . without due process
> of law," has been interpreted to apply the protections of
> the First Amendment equally to state governments. (There's
> a hot debate about whether this is a historically sound
> interpretation, but we'll set this aside here.) And courts
> have also read the First Amendment as applying to executive
> agencies and the federal courts as well as Congress.
>
> But absent really exceptional circumstances, the First and
> Fourteenth Amendments do *not* constrain private entities:
> Private employees, private university, private dinner party
> hosts, private businesses.
>
> There can be nothing unconstitutional about a private list
> moderator rejecting your posting to a discussion list,
> Prodigy editing out your dirty words, or a service provider
> refusing to let its users put up Nazi-themed Web pages.
> Only "state action" (which actually includes all government
> action, including federal action) implicates the
> constitutional protections.
>
> What if the speech restrictions are imposed by a private
> actor who is in some way related to the government -- for
> instance, subsidized or employed by a government agency?
> The rule is that "state action" is present only when the
> speech restriction is dictated or influenced by the
> government. Thus,
>
> - GOVERNMENT FUNDING ISN'T ENOUGH: If a
> private employer restricts what his employees
> may e-mail, there's no state action, even if
> the employer gets all its business from
> government contracts.
>
> - GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OF THE COMPUTER ISN'T
> ENOUGH: If a public university lets someone
> set up a moderated discussion list on its
> computer, and the moderator excludes certain
> messages, there's no state action, even
> though the list is on a public computer.
>
> - GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT OF THE MODERATOR ISN'T
> ENOUGH: The fact that a list moderator is
> employed by the government is not by itself
> enough: If a public university lets a
> faculty member set up a moderated discussion
> list, there's almost certainly no state
> action, so long as the faculty member's
> decisions are his own and not dictated by the
> government.
>
> - GOVERNMENT DICTATION OF SPEECH RESTRICTION IS
> ENOUGH: But if a public entity has an
> employee set up a moderated list, and
> *instructs* the employee to reject any, say,
> profane or bigoted messages, there is state
> action (though conceivably, as we'll see
> below, the government's action might still be
> constitutional).
>
> Qualification: This relates only to rights under the U.S.
> Constitution. Some state constitutions and state statutes
> do provide protection against some private speech
> restrictions. A California law, for instance, generally
> bans many restrictions imposed on students by private
> universities.
>
>
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> authors:
>
> Larry Lessig David Post Eugene Volokh
>
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
>
>
> Cyberspace-Law for Non-Lawyers is presented by the
> Cyberspace Law Institute and Social Science Electronic
> Publishing.
>
> Please note that this is an announcement-only list and not a
> discussion list. Do not attempt to post comments to the
> list, as they will be ignored. An open discussion about
> these issues is being held at our archive web site at
> http://www.counsel.com/cyberspace which also contains an
> archive of the course materials.
>
> You can retrieve all of the material posted to date for
> Cyberspace-Law For Non-Lawyers by sending e-mail to:
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> with the (optional) subject line:
>
> GET INDEX
>
> and in the body, type the message:
>
> GET CYBERSPACE-LAW.LOG9608
> GET CYBERSPACE-LAW.LOG9609
> GET CYBERSPACE-LAW.LOG9610
>
> Type all three lines above to get all the materials posted
> to date, or type the Line ending in LOG9608 to get the
> materials posted through August '96, type the line ending in
> LOG9609 to receive all the materials posted in September,
> etc.
>
> (\__/) .~ ~. ))
> /O O ./ .' Patrick Douglas Crispen
> {O__, \ { The University of Alabama
> / . . ) \ [log in to unmask]
> |-| '-' \ } http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/
> .( _( )_.'
> '---.~_ _ _& Warning: squirrels.
>
|
