myspace

The Indiana Supreme Court has reversed a trial court's
decision that a middle school student was a "delinquent
child" for posting statements about her former principal on
the internet website myspace.com, A.B. v Indiana, Doc No.
67501-0709-JV-373 (Ind, May 13, 2008). The middle
school student, A.B., posted critical statements regarding her
former principal, Shawn Gobert, after transferring to another
school. The trial court ruled that A.B. was a delinquent
child because her statements, if made by an adult, would

By Marshall W. Grate
A public school district must exercise caution in monitoring off-campus speech. In Layshock v Hermitage School District, (WD PA 2007), a public school district was held to have violated the First Amendment rights of a senior high school student when it issued a 10-day suspension for his creation of a parody profile of the high school principal on the student’s MySpace.com website during non-school hours at the student’s grandmother’s computer.

MySpace Agreement Announced

1/15/08, Attorney General Mike COX announced that MySpace has agreed to significant steps to better protect children on its social-networking website. The new safety measures include the creation of a broad-based task force to explore and develop age and identity verification technology.

"Today's announcement is a major step in the right direction by MySpace to help protect children online," Cox said. "Too many youngsters still are preyed upon by Internet predators. These changes will help safeguard more children online."

Here is the pdf: A School Administrator's Guide to MySpace.com. The process for How to Remove a False and/or Offensive Profile and How to Contact MySpace.com is on page 9 of the pdf.