The Daily Gamecock

Issue date: 2/20/08 Section: Viewpoints

Josh Rabon

What is obviously classless isn't necessarily illegal - is it?

So is the case of JuicyCampus.com, which has raised a furor throughout many college campuses over the past year.

The site, which proclaims that "posts are totally, 100 percent anonymous," essentially allows anyone to post almost anything about their fellow students. The site is even kind enough to be organized by college, thus saving you the trouble of wading through the "easiest girls of Duke" en route to the "biggest cokeheads of [your school here]."

With social sites such as Facebook making it painfully easy for us to mangle things up on our own, some student leaders have called for a ban on the site. A Cornell student told the Associated Press he had to worry about his job prospects after an unknown user posted a lengthy diatribe detailing his alleged sexual exploits.

Even worse - his little sister might somehow see it. While the site at least has the dignity to prevent search engines from indexing the content, his points are still quite valid: once it's on the Web, all bets are off.

Proponents of the site compare calls for a ban to censorship - if you don't like it, don't read it. It has also been legally disputed and somewhat settled that a company cannot be held liable for libelous statements made by a user without their knowledge.

It would be like holding Sprint accountable for all the libelous statements made over their networks. On some level this is true, but not in terms of feasibility or intentions. In fact, it's a completely absurd comparison.

Sprint may be ignorant to the venom traveling their lines, but JuicyCampus.com is intentionally turning its head the other way while beckoning for more posts.

While the line between free speech and libel is fuzzy, the line between bystander and accomplice is equally blurry. It is hard to believe a site that dispenses advice about using an IP address cloaking program and the slogan "C'mon. Give us the juice," is totally ingenuous.

Unfortunately, however, the most direct method of assault will probably not come through legal channels. It will take students banding together and shunning the site. Of course, some people will still post. But they are the problem in the first place, even more so than the site. As much as the accomplice wants the crime to be committed, he still needs someone to do the deed.

Luckily for most of us though, freedom of expression is a two-way street. You can say whatever absurdities you like behind the veil of the Internet, but we can openly call you an idiot and a low-life for saying them.

JuicyCampus.com and others like it will be brought down by the vast majority of reasonable people who refuse to fuel the fire and sharply criticize those who post there.

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