Well now Joe has a libel claim. If Joe is actually a deviant criminal then, well... he pissed off the wrong person. What's the issue?
What about "Joe has, at the time this sign was made, never denied beating his wife on Decemeber 31st." The claim could be very true in that Joe never has denied that specific claim because there was no reason to deny a claim that hadn't been made yet.
What about putting up the sordid details of a teenagers love life on a bulletin board outside her high school? Assume you verified the statements as factual. Is there perhaps an issue even when it is the truth?
Which goes back to the other poster's question of where is the problem if it is a factual claim. Assuming they share in the same answer as you, it seems the problem occurs at the point where stating factual statements crosses over into harassment.
While a generic answer that I generally find agreeable, the devil is always in the details, no? Where exactly is that line, and is there still not a problem if someone behaves in manner that is extremely close to but not crossing that line?
Sometimes the platform really is the problem. It’s the old mean rime before dick issue, if you let people share content you will see verious kinds of content. Nintendo for example gets around this by limiting what messages you can send to other people.
I am not saying it’s nessisarily appropriate for collages, but it is a real issue schools need to deal with.
The platform you're talking about is the internet. So do we outlaw billboards? What about TV? I could always run a commercial, right? Are newspapers ok?
We have laws that are reactive because we are not a country feels comfortable providing safety by stripping freedoms. You can come up with blatant examples all day, but real world scenarios will not always be so cut and dry. I lean to the side of less restriction, not more.
That's not to say message boards need to have some person review every post before it goes public. But, that is a possible theoretical solution to this issue. Granted it's not economically viable, but plenty of other businesses models are also limited by the law.
PS: HN is actually a great example of what's possible while still allowing random postings online while avoiding many of these issues.
Sure, we've decided as a society to limit some freedoms for the greater good. You also cannot shout "fire" in a movie theater. We have libel and slander laws. We have laws against harassment.
It's a question of where to draw the line, and I believe censoring legal discourse crosses it.
This case is also rather far from the mark of polite discourse and would have been blocked from billboards etc. It's more about how to do this kind of management and some back and forth as we figure out societal norms for new things just seems reasonable to me.
"Figure something out or we block you." -> "How about this?" or "Meh you're not worth dealing with."
Before forensics advanced sufficiently just a dead body in the street with no witnesses was a perfect murder.
The internet poses new hurdles because information is so easily accessible, but we have to be very careful about imposing rules which restrict an adult's ability to consume information.
The solution isn’t to ban billboards.
And the ban part is all about the special position of a University vs students. Not about the internet, not about the public in general. Anyway that's how the OP started...
This is exactly why we have the first ammendment. This sort of power should not exist as those who would wield it are not infallible and cannot be trusted.
Should public libraries be obligated to block online content that harasses some of their patrons?
And Universities have a special obligation, lets not forget that.