MySpace 'friend' may cost school $3 million
Summary: MySpace 'friends' can be very unfriendly.
MySpace touts it is “an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends”:
"See who knows who, or how you are connected. Find out if you really are six people away from Kevin Bacon."
MySpace is for everyone:
- Friends who want to talk Online
- Single people who want to meet other Singles
- Matchmakers who want to connect their friends with other friends
- Families who want to keep in touch--map your Family Tree
- Business people and co-workers interested in networking
- Classmates and study partners
- Anyone looking for long lost friends!
Brighton High School in Tennessee is objecting that “MySpace is for everyone” means anyone wanting to make a fake MySpace page for a teacher as well, according to Alexis Amarose, “Eyewitness News.”
Several students were put on probation or suspended from attending the school after they made a phony MySpace page for their assistant principal:
Chris Barnett, who is one of the students who made the page, said, I thought it was (ok), a couple of people looked at it, HA, HA, it was funny….
School officials had a problem with what was being written by students in the comments section of the page. Chris and other Brighton students wrote about the assistant principal acting inappropriately around female students. Chris said, “One girl posted a comment about her shirt and what it was showing, and the way girls feel about him at school. I didn't go into too much detail about it, but I just posted what girls talk about.”
Donald Barnett, father of one of the MySpace pranksters (fraudsters?), believes the school’s suspension of his son is a violation of a right to free speech and is suing the school district for reinstatement to the school.
Barnett also believes each of the three MySpace students are entitled to a million dollars each from the school district and is suing for that as well:
It was just so outlandish the way they reacted, that we were just in awe of the way they reacted.
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Talkback
No surprises here
father is a rude, obnoxious jerk.
The school was right...
You've GOT to be kidding...
This is precisely the mentality that is creating the unfortunate world in which we must currently live. Apparently, no one is actually responsible for any wrong doing and every form of punishment is a violation of someone's rights which must, of course, be accompanied by multi-million dollar law suits.
I may be dating myself... but when i was in high school such a prank would be punished with, at minimum, detention and possibly suspension. Not to mention the fact that my parents reaction would involve handing me my a**, grounding, and quite possibly some sort of monetary *penalty*--- most certainly NOT a multi-million dollar law suit.
The younger Mr. Barnett can be forgiven for being a teenager and pulling a very childish (he is a teenager afterall) prank. The senior Mr. Barnett needs to have his head examined...I'm positive it must be a medical curiousity... with the ability to see clearly from one ear through his skull directly out the other with no intervening blockage and all.
Any bets on how long it will take the parents of the teen who shot and posted footage of another student being beaten up to sue because THEIR sons free speech and civil rights were violated by removing the footage?
Isn't this indentity theft?
RE: MySpace 'friend' may cost school $3 million
Free speech, my foot. Not when it involves a fake online presence that would ruin a person's career, if the content were taken seriously.
RE: What as myspace to do with school?