Another student at the school, a senior from India, became suicidal after a posting detailed her alleged sexual skills. The girl told friends that she feared she would be ostracized in her community or expelled from the country if people heard about it, Mr. Weiner said. Other postings on the site reportedly included racist and anti-gay statements. Mr. Weiner said he had asked the webmaster for the Los Angeles Unified School District to block access to the site from school computers. We're used to dealing with graffiti on the walls and bathroom doors, but this is so public.
People can see it from anywhere.
We're doing everything we can to protect our kids, and we're frustrated. More Cases Expected Mark Goodman, the executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., a nonprofit that provides legal assistance to student journalists, predicted many more controversies over similar Web sites of which he said there are thousands but said legal actions to halt them would be hard to win. Students spreading rumors is an old story, but people are reacting more strongly now because it's on the Internet. Because the Internet audience is potentially vast, online libel lawsuits offer the possibility of larger monetary awards, Mr. Goodman said. More and more, legal cases are beginning to test the issue of free speech in the Internet age, and legal experts say the defining line can be whether the comments constitute a threat.