Tag: Winter 2000-01

The explosion of the Internet continues to send shock waves through the American justice system, as courts mediate disputes between advocates of unregulated cyber-speech and government arms seeking to control such speech.

In recent months, cyber-liberties have prevailed in one federal court case, been limited in another and await final judgment in two others.

In New Mexico, state government officials accepted a November 1999 federal court ruling and laid to rest any possibility of continuing their fight to criminalize the electronic distribution of material deemed harmful to minors.

OKLAHOMA -- A federal appellate court ruled in October that peer grading in schools is prohibited by a federal law that protects the privacy of student "education records."

MONTANA -- Linda Tracy thinks she's a journalist. Missoula prosecutors say she's just a student.

NEW MEXICO -- When a group of Edgewood Middle School students used\nthe Internet to post a list of other students they hated, they earned suspensions\nand spawned a debate that pits students' right to free expression against\nschool officials' obligation to protect their students.\n

NEW HAMPSHIRE -- The Exeter School Board voted to make logs of Web sites visited by students using school computers available to the public in November after a county superior court ruled in favor of a father who wanted copies of Web page addresses accessed by children at school.

TENNESSEE -- University of Tennessee officials filed documents in federal court in September in an attempt to avoid the release of records the university claims are private and would cost thousands of dollars to assemble.

The ESPN television network subpoenaed the records, claiming they are required for the network's defense against a defamation suit filed by Tennessee football player Reggie Ridley and Victoria Gray, a former athletics department tutor.

Ridley and Gray filed their separate federal suits, each asking $2 million in damages, last year after the network alleged massive academic fraud by the school

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congress passed a bill in December requiring many elementary and secondary schools and public libraries receiving federal technology funds to install Internet filters on their computers.

The Children's Internet Protection Act, introduced in the Senate by Sens.

NEVADA -- The University and Community Colleges System of Nevada in November asked the state supreme court to overturn a lower court's ruling forcing the system to conduct a public search for a new president for the Community College of Southern Nevada

The editor of a student newspaper who exposed the censorship of a student newspaper at a neighboring high school and a college newspaper that uncovered the details of a lavish contract given to their former university president received the 2000 Scholastic Press Freedom Award.

Nick Edwards, a former editor of the Stinger at Camarillo High School in Camarillo, Calif., and the staff of the Muleskinner, the student newspaper at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg received the awards in November.

The award, sponsored by the Student Press Law Center and the National Scholastic Press Association/Associated Collegiate Press, is given each year to a high school and a college student journalist or student news medium that has demonstrated outstanding support for the free press rights of students.

Edwards

WISCONSIN -- The September revelation that University of Wisconsin officials had altered the cover photo of the school's 2001-02 undergraduate application brochure prompted a state legislator to introduce a bill designed to block such practices, a move some say would unnecessarily limit the freedom of photojournalists.

State Rep.