Teens Sue High School That Punished Them for Racy MySpace Pics

Do you think everything you publish on the internet is private? Think again…

Two Indiana teenagers have sued their school district after they were punished for posting suggestive photos on MySpace. The girls, 10th-graders at Churubusco High School in Churubusco, Indiana, say they were humiliated after the school banned them from fall semester extracurricular activities and forced them to apologize to the all-male Athletics Board (composed of varsity coaches). The girls also had to attend three counseling sessions.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed the proposed class-action suit on behalf of the girls and all present and future students at the school who participate or may participate in extracurricular activities. The ACLU argues the district violated the girls’ First Amendment rights and should not have punished them for activities conducted outside school. The suit names the girls’ high school, school district and principal.

According to the complaint, the photos in question were taken at a slumber party that occurred during the summer school break. The girls were photographed “pretending to kiss or lick a large multi-colored lollipop shaped (like a) phallus.” Other pictures showed them in lingerie with dollar bills tucked into the underwear. The girls each posted the pictures to their MySpace pages. Only “friends” could view the photos on their pages. But after someone copied the images, they found their way to the school principal.

According to the school’s student handbook, the principal “may exclude any student-athlete from representing Churubusco High School if his/her conduct in or out of school reflects discredit” upon the school or creates a “disruptive influence on the discipline, good order, moral, or educational environment” at the school.

There are a lot of interesting comments attached to this article. Many of them get back to the age-old argument of whether or not the school has a right to suspend a student for something that happened off-campus. Even more interesting, the idea that these students (and whoever leaked the photos to the principal) could have been charged with distributing child pornography for posting pictures of themselves while underage and committing what would appear to be sex acts.

I’m pretty sure that when Al Gore invented the internet, he never considered anything like this would happen. Hat tip to Threat Level.

The New Media

Germany Had Their Own Balloon Boy Hoax Last Month

All of Germany was bamboozled Thursday by a bizarre scheme that tricked the country’s main wire service into reporting an attempted suicide bombing in a California town — an attack supposedly perpetrated by a non-existent rap group called the “Berlin Boys.”

The work of German filmmakers peddling a satirical movie called Short Cut to Hollywood, the elaborate hoax involved at least two faked websites, a faked Wikipedia entry and California phone numbers for “public safety” officials that were actually being answered by hoaxsters in Germany using Skype.

The hoax has transfixed this country. It prompted a 1,000-word tome on the website of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s most respected newspaper, and even a press conference denouncing the incident by the DPA – the German wire service responsible for first disseminating the news about the “attack.”

The hoax’s effect was felt thousands of miles away, as a flood of concerned phone calls from Germany jammed the switchboards at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s office, which has jurisdiction over the supposed bombing site in California.

“This is frustrating and a waste of our resources,” said office spokesman Arden Wiltshire, who was awakened at 5 a.m. Thursday to try and sort out the crisis. Wiltshire worries that dispatchers could have missed important calls to deal with the Germans.

“We’re sorry for what happened; we, too, were victimized,” said Justus Demmer, a DPA spokesman.

More details here… just shows you the power of the internet in media these days. Too bad that sometimes being fastest to the story means that you have the wrong story or no story at all.

Federal Government Considering a Cyberbullying Bill

You may have heard the name of Lori Drew in the news. She was the mother accused of running a cyberbullying scheme against a 13-year-old girl who was a rival of her daughter. Drew created a fake MySpace profile of a teenage boy who pretended to have a romantic attraction to Megan Meier. When Drew (as the fake profile) broke off their relationship, Meier committed suicide. The government argued that violating MySpace’s terms of service amounted to computer hacking, but the judge overturned the jury verdict and deemed she was not guilty. The prosecution is now considering an appeal.

HR 1966 (introduced by Linda Sanchez of California) would ban hostile or harassing speech in e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones and text messages with the intent to cause emotional distress. If the bill were liberally interpreted, I’m assuming that would open up about 85% of the internet to Federal indictments.

Every Little Thing You Do Is Interesting

As companies embrace social media and social networks, somehow I don’t think this is what they had in mind.

Did You Know?

I posted a similar video about a month ago asking whether or not social media was a fad. Here are some more figures in this video:

There’s a lot to think about here:

• Businesses that embrace the slow delivery of content are probably headed for extinction.
• The internet has broken open a brand new audience that watches television, gets information, conducts business, makes purchases and primarily communicates via mobile devices and laptops.
• Technology is often faster than the speed of common sense.
• Does what you see demonstrate that our sinful desire to have what we want right now is fueled by technology?

There are probably more things to mine from that, and maybe we’ll come up with some on Wednesday. I’m not trying to demonize technology, but I think that it certainly urges some caution.

Hat tip to Daniel Mosley.

CBS and Pepsi Bring Video Ads to Printed Page

I had this on my Twitter feed last week, but I found some video of this in action.

Target: Women

Here’s a couple of entertaining videos about gender roles in advertising.

The best part about being a girl is your girlfriends. They keep you happy when you’re sad and make you laugh when you want to cry, and most importantly, tell you what to buy.

This one has a bleeped-out word towards the beginning.

Single men in commercials look good, drive fast, and drink beer. Then they meet women, get married, and become good-for-nothing doofy husbands.

Top 5 Twitter Related Trends to Watch

Not sure why I’m focusing so much on Twitter lately… honestly, I think that Facebook is a bit more of a useful platform. Anyway, some interesting points in this post here, especially the advent of real-time search engines. An interesting idea, but why do you need real time updates to your Google searches? After you’ve found your link, how often do you go back? And what kind of a drag is that going to create on performance? Enquiring minds want to know…

#3 and #4 on the list are way more interesting to me. Enlisting product champions on Twitter to tweetvertise for you with RTs and links with the promise of winning something is brilliant marketing strategy. I have to admit it, I’m hooked.

Ironic But True — Many On Twitter Are Just Silent

As you can see to the left, I have a Twitter feed, and it’s becoming cumbersome to handle all this social media now. I have an RSS reader, which frequently takes hours to comb through and sort out. I’m on Facebook, which I generally reserve for communicating with people I know, and I’m on Twitter, which I use primarily for networking and university purposes.

Apparently Twitter got really popular in the mainstream population when Oprah talked about it on her show a while back, but then people ditched it a week later. Now, Conan O’Brien is bringing Twitter back with his Twitter Tracker segments on the Tonight Show, which really serve only to mock social media and what pedestrian things celebrities will say on there.

Anyway, this article has an interesting comparison: people tend to overshare personal information on Facebook, while they tend to post nothing at all on Twitter.