Last updated on February 7, 2013
A UCLA student recorded a video rant complaining about about Asians in the library, which went viral (caution re the anonymous comments–they may be offensive). [Update: according to the Sacramento Bee, the video may have been a trial balloon for a larger blog presence.]
Since I am teaching communications law and policy right now, this poses a teaching moment on subjects such as:
- the reach of social media;
- the right of reply (fairness doctrine v. youtube response videos);
- privacy (and the lack thereof) since the speaker’s name, address, phone number, and e-mail were almost immediately posted in various comments;
- intermediary liability (what UCLA might do regarding comments posted on its various sites and blogs; see 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2));
- “bad” content (racist speech v. swear words v. sexual indecency v. violence) and freedom of expression;
- racism, sexism, violence.
I have asked my students to consider:
- What advice do you give if you’re an in house lawyer to UCLA?
- What advice do you give if you’re the speaker’s lawyer?
- What advice do you give to someone who’s outraged?
- Are you really shocked by this? See the Rush Limbaugh clip below.
Interesting response videos (some of this may be PG-13):
- Chancellor Gene Block’s official response
- from 123waveatme
- very creative musical response from jimmy (hat tip to one of my commlaw students)
Story on Rush Limbaugh:
(updated 2/7/2013 10:14 AM to add new link)