Social-networkers' protests

Students are starting to agitate for their free-speech rights, starting in San Bernardino. "Zach Fuller, 18, held up a sign recently in front of Etiwanda High School proclaiming 'We don't need no thought control'," reports the San Bernardino Sun. Zach "was protesting the school's decision to suspend five of his friends for profane online postings made off campus." The Sun quotes the executive director of the Nashville, Tenn.-based First Amendment Center as saying that social-networking technology, or the user-driven Web, is opening up a whole new area for the free-speech issue. But the San Bernardino students' postings weren't just profane. Apparently, defamation might've been an issue too: "The five students suspended last month had posted profanity-laden comments about a teacher on MySpace from their home computers. Vulgar language and photos of the teacher accompanied other pictures of Nazi images." Here's an item I posted last week about school policymaking and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "FAQ on Student Blogging" and free speech.