French court says site cannot grade teachers

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This court ruling is rude.

Perhaps it was a rude way of putting it, but don't act like American society never gets criticized on the Internet by members of European nations. We get called all kinds of things, many of them on this very website. And the OP was completely correct to say that this ruling does not fall in line with values that the French people and government want the world to associate with them.

I really don't get this argument about this website constituting an invasion of "privacy". When someone installs a tape recorder in your bedroom without your permission, that's an invasion of privacy, because you have an expectation of privacy. What a teacher says and does in their classroom is not private. What you're suggesting, that it should be illegal for students to post opinions about teachers while using the teacher's real names, clearly gives teachers special treatment. Any one of us could end up on the wrong end of the Internet's malcontents, but if it happened, would we expect the government to step in and shut down whatever website the slanderer chose to use? Should every gossip website administrator be arrested and fined by the government?

Slander and libel are CIVIL matters. The ability to voice your opinion is at the absolute heart of democracy. In America, if the person is using a public forum to disseminate something that is false in order to hurt someone else, that is slander or libel and the aggrieved party has the right to sue the person spreading these lies. But what France has just done is to ignore the right to free speech and the right to opinion and just kill the messenger.

Posted by: TheSimulacra   Posted on: 03/04/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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