
Court rules universities may have duty to block websites that harass students - MagicPropmaker
https://reason.com/volokh/2018/12/19/universities-may-have-duty-to-block-stud
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mbrumlow
Somewhere we went wrong when coming up with this idea of online harassment.

People are going to say mean things to other people. This is never going to
change.

The solution is simple. If somebody is saying something you don't like then
don't visit their site. If it is in a platform then block them and or set your
profile to only interact with a white list. If they say something as fact
about you that is not true, sue them, we already have the laws for this stuff.
But most importantly stop worrying about what somebody else says to you
online.

People have a duty to police their own online content. Nobody should be
telling me what I can and can't look at on the internet (please don't take
that out of context of laws)

Universities are not our parents.

~~~
sgift
> Somewhere we went wrong

Yes. The moment we brought up the chant of "sticks and stones may break my
bones, but words can never hurt me". The brain can break the same way your
legs or arms can and the "just tough it out" answer is not an answer at all.

No one would suggest you should just not visit a neighborhood if people there
attacked you. The proof that the web should be a special case because "muh,
free speech above all" is very flimsy.

~~~
EpicEng
>No one would suggest you should just not visit a neighborhood if people there
attacked you.

I would absolutely suggest that. I'd advise you right now not to e.g. take a
trip to the south side of Chicago. What are you suggesting? That the
government has an obligation to proactively prevent crime? How is that to be
done? Martial law?

You can't have the freedoms you enjoy and complete safety. It's the price we
pay, and it's worth it.

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
>I would absolutely suggest that.

For the sake of the person's safety that should be suggested, but where does
one draw the line at such suggestions? College aged women are safer if they
don't drink alcohol, so should that be the official statement of a university?
What about saying that if they stay with a male guardian, they will be safer
than if they don't? If that statement is true, should it be an official policy
statement made to increase safety?

~~~
EpicEng
>College aged women are safer if they don't drink alcohol, so should that be
the official statement of a university?

If they're under 21 probably, yeah. At 21 and above, like always, you have to
be careful of what situations you put yourself in. That's not victim blaming,
it's reality. Malicious people will always exist and women will always be at a
physical disadvantage.

>What about saying that if they stay with a male guardian, they will be safer
than if they don't? If that statement is true, should it be an official policy
statement made to increase safety?

No, it should not be a rule because the government should not limit a woman's
right to travel as they see fit. Don't you see the problem with this line of
thinking? Safety at the cost of freedom is a mistake.

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
>No, it should not be a rule

Sorry for the confusion, I didn't mean for it to exist as an actual rule, just
as an recommendation by the institution in question. Such as a campus police
department giving out safety tips.

~~~
EpicEng
In that case I suppose I don't really care. I care about the limitation of
freedom, not suggestions. If this were simply a suggestion then sure, why not?
Who cares, people may do as they like. It may be something that catches our
attention for a news cycle or two, but it's not a big deal.

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brudgers
MWU was successful in having the complaint dismissed in US Circuit Court. The
ruling in the article is a remand from Fourth Circuit Appeals vacating the US
Circuit Court's dismissal of two claims and upholding its dismissal of the
third claim. As required, the ruling is based on a favorable reading of the
plaintiff's argument (since the case was not heard at trial).

The title of the article is misleading in so far as there is a difference
between websites and mobile apps. And perhaps in so far as the specific app
involved, Yik-Yak, used geolocation tied directly to specific universities and
using MWU's network was a first order means of accessing Yik-Yak in the
context of the MWU oriented Yik-Yak community.

Neither party denies that threats of rape and murder were made via Yik-Yak
against specific students.

The plaintiffs allege that MWU could have blacklisted Yik-Yak's IP address on
it's network. The plaintiffs cited the failure of MWU to block Yik-Yak as
evidence of deliberate indifference to Title IX and Equal Protection claims.

The keystone of MWU's defense against the deliberate indifference claims was
that blocking Yik-Yak would be a violation of the First Amendment.

4th Appeals determined that threats of rape and murder made via Yik-Yak were
threatening speech and ruled on established precedent that threatening speech
is not protected. As a matter of legal precedent the court noted the long
standing practice of blocking music and video download IP addresses and
sanctioning students for copyright infringing downloads as evidence of
technical and practical feasibility.

The court vacated the dismissal of the Title IX and Equal Protection Clause
claims and remanded back to the Circuit Court.

~~~
kayfox
So, what would have happened if they UMW had blocked Yik Yak on their network
and students continued to use it (since its a smartphone app) on their phones
using cellular data?

~~~
csydas
The actual Court Opinion misrepresented the actual block option. When YikYak
was actually running, a proper block request could be sent to the company to
blackout the GPS coordinates of a University from the app, effectively killing
the local YikYak community.

The app worked based on GPS proximity -- you had to be within 1.5 miles of a
given university in order to participate in the "herd" as they called it. This
added a lot of character to each individual herd, even if all the groups
essentially just reposted the same memes from 4chan/reddit non-stop, but with
their own local flavor attached.

YikYak had for some time been cooperating with schools and universities to
perform the blackouts and even advertised it as a means of compliance and
battling harassment through the app.

Had a blackout request been made, it would have been effective and the above
question would not have been relevant.

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matchbok
Dear lord. Are you an adult when you turn 18? Why all the babysitting at uni?
It's school, not a daycare.

~~~
thecanman
Uni is essentially extended High-School for students nowadays, unfortunately.

~~~
bilbo0s
Yep, and school shootings are way too common for university admins to ignore.
They almost _have_ to do something.

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csydas
Could a mod please change the link to the actual Court Opinion [1]? Both the
linked article and the source that is cited omit a considerable amount of
detail as to what actions are actually being proposed, the context of the
threats (surrounding events and the platform YikYak, which requires proximity
to participate in), and also completely ignores the actual suggestions made by
the Court.

[1]
[http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/172220.P.pdf](http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/172220.P.pdf)

~~~
eugeniub
Reason.com omitting context and detail? Say it ain't so.

~~~
cryptonector
This isn't so much Reason as the Volokh Conspiracy (who used to be
independent, then were hosted at the Washington Post for a few years, and now
are at Reason). Specifically this is Eugene Volokh, who is usually very
careful and said this in TFA: "I'm traveling, and thus won't have time to post
a detailed analysis myself, but here's part of the analysis from Samantha
Harris at FIRE:".

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KallDrexx
Does this mean that Universities have to block Facebook since a lot of
harassment is done over it?

(yes wishful thinking)

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jeffdavis
The important distinction here is not whether the speech is good or bad; it's
whether we are punishing bad speech that happened in the past or actually
preventing speech from happening in the future (which may be good or bad).

The first amendmemt rightly allows punishing many kinds of bad speech after
the fact, but places a _much_ higher bar for restraining speech in the future.

Blocking websites or communication apps over harassment is simply
unconstitutional unless there is some kind of extreme example (like the domain
name itself being invalid speech).

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drenvuk
Looking at the opinion there's more than the university could have done in
order to remedy the situation aside from block YikYak. That's where their
failure lies. It doesn't seem like blocking YikYak would have been a must or
required. I hope schools don't use this as a reason to make that kind of thing
the first response taken.

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eximius
We need Bill and Ted now more than ever.

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deytempo
No more Facebook or twitter... or social media...

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pinneycolton
If the speech in question was determined to be a true threat, blocking
exposure to the speech could have serious unintended consequences. It could
people unaware of specific threats and expose them to harm. Ignorance is
bliss...until it gets you hurt.

If someone posted a credible threat of violence against people fitting my
demographic profile, I'd want to be aware of it. I don't need to be protected
from the words. I don't say that to diminish the negative effects of hate
speech at all. I may be hurt and angry after reading them. It could trigger me
in ways that I try to avoid. That being said, I think our courts need a
reminder that the negative effects of exposure to hate-violence can be much
more severe than exposure to hate speech. I'd rather fight myself, in my own
head, than someone who wants to do me physical harm.

~~~
csydas
This is a misunderstanding of the actual complaint from the plaintiff, and it
likely comes from the very misleading article title from Reason.com:

I posted this below, but:

The complaint is not that YikYak wasn't blocked -- it's that no action was
taken by the University to investigate the threats properly and readily, even
so much as just creating a strong stance on "hey, don't tell people you're
going to kill them". Blocking YikYak was simply __an option__ which the
University could have taken, but that wasn't the thrust of the plaintiffs'
argument at all, nor the Court's Opinion. The point of blocking YikYak was
more of a point that "well, you absolutely could have done something", rather
than a prescribed course of action.

You're arguing a point that was not made by the plaintiffs and also is not
related to the actual court Opinion either. The crux of the complaint is that
in light of real, credible threats, the University took no action whatsoever.
The Opinion is more about how the defenses of anonymity made it "impossible"
for the University to act and that 1st Amendment protections prohibited [the
university] from doing so were considered invalid in light of other case law.

~~~
pinneycolton
About 10-15% of the opinion addresses the issues of whether or not the
university had "substantial control" over the vehicle for harassment and if it
displayed "deliberate indifference" in not taking appropriate steps to end the
harassment. It rejects the idea that the University can't control activity on
its own network. It also notes that the University allowed the harassment to
continue for months when it could have stopped it.

It seems like we're reading pages 14 - 24(ish) of the opinion - plus some
later sections - differently. That's the nature of this sort of ruling. This
does not constitute a misunderstanding of the complaint on my part, nor was I
misled by the title on reason.com.

Personally, I agree with the vast majority of the opinion. The University
could have - and should have - done more to pinpoint the harassers and punish
them in accordance with university policy. It does not explicitly state that
the University should have blocked the app, but it does spend considerable
time demonstrating that not blocking the app constituted deliberate
indifference to the harassment.

I also agree with the other poster who mentioned there are other ways for
communicating threats. With hindsight being 20-20, though, we don't know if a
threat is a serious threat until it is acted upon. By the time those systems
are activated, there has generally already been violence and/or loss of life,
unfortunately.

[http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/172220.P.pdf](http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/172220.P.pdf)

