Comment by csydas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csydas | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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

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