JuicyCampus.com, a website created by Duke graduate Matt Ivester, serves essentially as an online source for students of various college campuses to anonymously post gossip about their fellow peers. The site includes all the “juicy” details of life on college campuses. Students included in the “gossip” are also often mentioned by name, causing many to be outraged and concerned as to how this will affect their future job searching. JuicyCampus also prohibits students’ ability to delete posts; Ivester claimed that this is because “We’re not in the business of censorship. We want to create a free, open forum where college students can discuss the topics that interest them most in the manner they deem appropriate.” (2). However, the site clearly spells out its rules for privacy and hate speech. Ivester continued that “What we will do is if we’re notified that someone’s contact information has been posted such as an e-mail address or a phone number, we’ll delete that. If there is a rampant hate speech and it’s not saying anything, that’s not what Juicycampus is all about, so we’ll delete that.” (2). Although I think that this website is completely childish and immature (college is NOT high school), I believe that the existence of sites such as these that promote free speech are essential to the existence of first amendment rights within our nation.
The popularity of this site has risen incredibly fast on college campuses; what began as a seven-campus website has grown into a site with pages of over 500 colleges and universities throughout the country. (2). Students, in addition to being offended as to what is posted about them, have also developed concerns of how the site will affect their future careers. Yet Ivester claims that the site material is blocked from appearing in Google searches (1). “I think they’re going to have to start developing a sense of humor,” Ivester said, according to The Post, when he was pressed about the potential of a more intensive employer background-checking. “It’s not going to work if they start taking unsubstantiated, ridiculous gossip as the truth.” (1). These may not be the most comforting answers, however, I believe that the site is no different than Facebook. While yes, at least on Facebook one can delete things or pictures tagged of themselves, nothing that is said is completely private. Yet people still have Facebook accounts.
JuicyCampus was recently subpoenaed by the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General and the Divison of Consumer Affairs in relation to the site’s operations. The subpoena was also issued to Lime Blue, L.L.C., the owner of the site, concerning how the company selects the campuses identified on the site and how the potential anonymous posters’ school affiliations are verified. (3). This also extended to how non-18 posters are differentiated from actual college student posters (3). While these all seem to be relevant questions in the ability to identify the truth in what and who posts what is posted, I find that it is nearly impossible to have the ability to truly identify anyone who posts something on the Internet. While yes, many posts have included hate speech which has brought this website to the attention of many federal officials, the site does in fact make users agree not to post content that is “abusive, obscene, or that might invade privacy rights. JuicyCampus.com informs the public that such offensive content may be removed.” (3).
I believe that while this website does evolve around the existence of immature gossip, it is indeed an example of free speech, thus, not allowing it would be in violation of the first amendment. According to an article mentioning the case Reno v, ACLU, “…Justice Stevens had never explicitly relied on the ‘scarcity rationale’ in Pacifica, he noted in Reno how the rationale did not apply to the Internet. The Red Lion Court had noted that the limited availability of broadcast frequencies justified the government regulation of those frequencies, and the FCC had used scarcity among other rationales in its administrative ruling in Pacifica. But Justice Stevens emphasized that no such scarcity occurred in cyberspace. Everybody was their own publisher and web surfers had as much access to any blogger as they had to the New York Times online.” (4). The case, which examined the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), found that the CDA’s regulation of speech on the Internet, while in the interest of protecting children, infringed upon adults’ rights to access information. Justice Stevens wrote that “The CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. Although the Government has an interest in protecting children from potentially harmful materials, see, e.g., Ginsberg, 390 U. S., at 639, the CDA pursues that interest by suppressing a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to send and receive,” (5). The Internet is too vast a medium to governed like other mediums. The existence of websites such as these, although the cause of much social controversy, is an essential test as to whether we still live in a society that accepts the first amendment. Of course I don’t agree with the content of the website; who would like to be mentioned in a campus-wide gossip site? But the idea of giving students an outlet to post what they want without limitation (except for hate speech of course) is a great privilege. Offense is the price of having free speech and an open marketplace of ideas.
(1) “College gossip site creator unapologetic at student Q&A”, Washington D.C., October 30, 2008
http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=7100
(2) “JuicyCampus Creator, Matt Ivester”, by Jillian Gordon, Saturday Night Magazine
http://www.snmag.com/MAGAZINE/Destination-Success/JuicyCampus-Creator-Matt-Ivester.html
(3) “JuicyCampus.com Under Investigation”, by Eric Sinrod, FindLaw
http://technology.findlaw.com/articles/00006/011151.html
(4) “Applying the Models to Sexually Themed Expression”, pages 69-81 in Jour 199 book
(5) Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997)
4 comments:
I think you raised a lot of good points here, and although there are plenty of reasons for us to dislike Juicy Campus, it still has a right to exist on the internet. The students raise a valid concern when they are worried about future jobs, etc, and the fact that the site doesn't let posters delete what they write is somewhat alarming. However, there is no captive audience on the internet, and there is no reason that Juicy Campus should not have a right to continue publishing these stories about what takes place on college campuses. It's Ivester's right to keep the site going, no matter how distasteful any of us think it is, or how worried anyone is that it may hurt their job opportunities in the future. Interesting topic, and good research!
Juicycampus.com is the perfect example of what free speech is all about. The ability to pour your personal viewpoints into an open forum and let others decipher through them to come up with their own viewpoint on the subject is what the website offers. This is the marketplace of ideas! Of course with college students, you are always going to have some controversy, whether it is offensive speech or comments that publicly embarrass somebody. The website has a policy about these actions. As you pointed out in your analysis, there really isn’t any way to trace who is behind these messages. If it is really serious, they can trace IP numbers, but for mean comments offensive comments, I highly doubt they would go through the trouble of an investigation. I believe that the website as a whole is a great tool for the public to use in finding opinions and happening around a college campus. Great job all the way around on your post.
from reading your post i felt like it was a good summary of what we learnt in class and it was interesting to see how it is applied here. i agree that this is the price we have to pay at the cost of a much greater freedom of expression. because of our vasts freedom of expression on the internet, many of our lives have become alot more transparent. with the increasing popularity of websites such as juicycampus and myspace, facebook, alot of times, it may be a disadvantage such as a hinderance to our privacy, it is the cost we pay for protecting our common freedom of expression.
Great job Rosie! You raised some very good points. Mary Beard also wrote about this for her first post, but it seems as though the controversy is only cumulating. Although it is disheartening to hear all this hate speech and the many lies posted onto the internet, I agree that it is a form of free speech. Like you said, there is no way to regulate the internet and no way to identify every single poster correctly. It is just another risk of participating in public life to have things posted about you. Of course it is unfortunate to have such a risk but it would be much worse to not have the ability to speak out at all. In this case speech acts as a safety valve, ensuring that anybody can vent, even if it is over frivolous matters.
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