By SN
Tuesday January 29, 2008
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Tech Dirt – January 29, 2008:
Rich Kulawiec writes in to let us know about a ridiculous situation in Florida, that has some similarities to the ridiculous Julie Amero situation. Basically, a bunch of school officials and local newspaper folks are freaking out about the potential for students to access porn and are blaming the wrong people while displaying stunning levels of ignorance.
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The basics of the situation are pretty straightforward. A cop who works at a middle school in Florida has a MySpace account, that he set up with the approval of the police department and the school, hoping it would allow him to connect with the kids he’s supposed to be protecting. One of his many, many friends on MySpace happened to link to a porn site on their own profile. So, because one friend out of a huge list of friends happens to link to a porn page, the cop is now under investigation with the local paper dramatizing the situation by noting that students could (gasp!) get to porn “in just three clicks.” Apparently, they’re investigating whether the officer is criminally liable for exposing children to inappropriate content — yes, because someone on his friend’s list linked to porn. Under that definition, an awful lot of people are probably guilty.
Ah, but the story gets better (or worse, actually). You see, after some investigation, people noticed that the school’s own website actually linked directly to a porn site itself — which would seem a lot worse than what the police officer did. In this case, the school had a list of “resources” and one of the links was on a domain that had expired and was taken over by a porn site. Now, using the logic that the school used in having the police officer investigated, shouldn’t the school officials also be investigated? Apparently not. Instead, they’re angry about the changing domain and are looking at “legal recourse.”
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And these people educate the next generation of American youth…how sad.
hey SN.. who’s the girl?
k thx bye
“Basically, a bunch of school officials and local newspaper folks are freaking out about the potential for students to access porn and are blaming the wrong people while displaying stunning levels of ignorance.”
The blind leading the blind or the ignorant leading the ignorant .
If you don’t know how something works, ask someone who knows before jumping to conclusions!
You can get to porn with three clicks anywhere on the Internet.
More to the point, if someone’s MySpace account gets hacked, chances are it’ll be taken over by a pr0n spammer, so it is rather unfair to punish the guy if his friend fell for a phisher.
why am I not surprised that this is in Florida
Social Networking’s dilemma, networks are as “clean” as their “dirtiest” member.
I’m pretty sure that if these kids are looking for porn, there’s a long list of places they’ll go before using myspace. If you want to prevent access to porn you have to prevent access to the internet or at least get some kind of parental control features setup. One might argue that if they don’t have access controls, they aren’t even trying to prevent it in the first place.
“. . . the local paper dramatizing the situation by noting that students could (gasp!) get to porn “in just three clicks.”
Why does the local paper need so many clicks to find porn? I would be happy to teach them to find it faster.
Seriously, these people are dangerously ignorant. Widspread use of the web has been going on for longer than a decade, yet these school administrators have no clue about how it works.
I say dangerously ignorant, because their ignorance has caused a competent, resourceful police officer to have his reputation questioned, and perhaps his career ruined.
And instead of merely removing the link to the porn site, the school shut down their website completely. And wants to sue someone. My God, how stupid are these people?
#6
Dirtiest member?
Ewwwwww…. LOL
I’m sure all the kids the cop was trying to buddy up to have wholesome G rated contenet on their sites!
#4 – I can find it in two clicks.
What I find Humorous, are sites that arent MODERATED..
This is like a search engine that DONT check out the sites, AT LEAST 1 time per month.
Between all the LOSt sites, DOWN sites, NEVER changed/updated sites, THINGS do change alot.
Just as SOME of the Youtube links CHANGE or GO AWAY/fail…THINGs change.
Stupid, churlish, ignorant, and destructive. Some people seem to derive endless entertainment value out of figuring out ways to destroy other people’s lives. There is a word for that sort of attitude; malevolence.
Stupid, churlish, ignorant, and destructive. Some people seem to derive endless entertainment value out of figuring out ways to destroy other people’s lives. There is a word for that sort of attitude; malevolence.
I only hit the button once, honest!
this is just sad. it’s 2008.. and we’re still wet behind the ears and smelling ourselves 200+ years later. When will we ever grow up and out of this petty crap.