California Scrutinizes Juicy Campus Web Site for Potential Legal Violations

California Scrutinizes Juicy Campus Web Site for Potential Legal Violations-Online gossip forum JuicyCampus.com came under attack this past week after state officials charged that the Web site’s “always anonymous and always juicy” posts violate consumer protection laws.

California officials are now attempting to launch a fraud investigation following legal action taken last week by the attorney general offices of New Jersey and Connecticut. After the two states charged JuicyCampus.com with violating its own terms and conditions and misleading users, California Assemblyman Alberto Torrico authored a letter to Attorney General Edmund G. Brown requesting an investigation.

JuicyCampus.com is an online forum where students can anonymously post “juicy” gossip concerning their respective college communities. The site contains pages of rumors that users can read, reply to and rank in terms of “juiciness.”

The majority of the posts target the greek system and range from remarks about favorite rock bands to allegations of sexual impropriety and drug abuse. In the past few months the site has created controversy at other schools such as Pepperdine University, where the student government called for a ban on the Web site from school servers, and at Loyola Marymount University, where a student was arrested on charges that he posted a death threat on JuicyCampus.com.

In a written statement to the attorney general, Torrico described Juicy Campus as a “dangerous campus gossip Web site that may be spreading libelous information, propagating hate speech, and endangering the safety of women on campuses across the state.” Torrico demanded an aggressive investigation to determine whether the site was violating consumer protection laws and state civil rights.

While the user conduct section of JuicyCampus.com’s terms and conditions prohibits users from posting any content that is defamatory, obscene, libelous or invasive of another’s privacy and threatens to report violators to applicable authorities, the site does not monitor content.

The New Jersey and Connecticut general attorney offices say that because Juicy Campus claims to ban libelous content - but fails to enforce this policy - it violates its own terms and conditions.

However, according to Matt Ivester, CEO and founder of JuicyCampus.com, the site does not claim to self-police by screening material or removing posts.

“Nowhere is it stated that we will remove content from the Web site,” Ivester said. “We ask in our terms and conditions for users not to post defamatory material but in section six we state there is no screening of content. The idea we are not following our own terms and conditions is ridiculous.”

Additionally Ivester said the Web site is legally shielded by both the First Amendment and the 1996 Communications and Decency Act Section 230, which provides immunity from liability for providers of an interactive computer service who publish information provided by others.

“I am very confident we have not violated any laws,” Ivester said.

Still, Robin Unander, an Associated Students Legal Resource Center attorney, charged that JuicyCampus.com is deceiving users and may be subject to less stringent legal interpretations.

“JuicyCampus.com is misleading users,” Unander said. “On one hand they claim to protect people but they are talking out their mouth and ass because there is no way people can take down the posts. … Laws are meant to be broadly interpreted. New Jersey and Connecticut are applying [consumer protection] laws in a liberal sense and saying JuicyCampus.com is talking out both ends and they need to decide to protect users or not have a disclaimer on their site.”

UCSB Interfraternity Council President J.P. Primeau, said that in the absence of immediate legal alternatives, the greek community has decided to disregard the site.

“Everything on the site is bullshit rumors and hearsay so we found the best thing to do is act like the site does not exist,” Primeau said.

Meanwhile Ivester said JuicyCampus.com will continue to operate despite any pending investigations.

“We are continuing business as usual,” Ivester said. “We are confident we will not be bullied and we won’t let the attorney general violate the free speech rights of our users.”

California Scrutinizes Juicy Campus Web Site for Potential Legal Violations

'We Are Vanderbilt' demonstrates campus unity

'We Are Vanderbilt' demonstrates campus unity-Student leaders are often called on by friends, fellow students and administrators to publicly comment on general issues relating student life and relevant topics of concern to the student body as a whole. Other times, issues are so immediate and have such impact on individual students that student leaders are compelled to take initiative themselves. Last week's "We are Vanderbilt" campaign represents a great example of such an initiative, designed by students in reaction to an issue that has caused tremendous pain and suffering to a segment of our community. Mike Warren's Friday column, "VSG pledge makes lame attempt to 'save' us all,” incorrectly categorizes the effort as an indictment of our campus as being overrun with racism and religious intolerance, an assertion that couldn't be further from the truth.

Like Warren, we (Vanderbilt Student Government) recognize that hatred and intolerance, cornerstones of many topics on Juicy Campus, are views limited to a minority of individuals who cowardly post written attacks on the website. By no means do we believe the initiative was needed to "save Vanderbilt's soul;” quite the contrary, it was needed to reassure community members personally abused or offended by the postings that the university stands with them and not behind the acts of spineless cyber abusers.

Juicy Campus is not indicative of widespread hate at Vanderbilt; instead, it is a symptom of a smaller issue: With anonymity as their protection, a few individuals are being allowed a forum for libeling individuals in our community and expressing hatred towards racial, ethnic, homosexual and religious populations. For weeks, the students hurt most by this violation of free speech have lacked a forum conducive to expressing their disgust and rejection of this intolerance within our community. On the university's part, silence at this point would have been implicit approval of this intolerance and hatred, and it was important that we provide the affected people with an outlet for publicly voicing their views.

Further, Warren's insinuation that VSG acted unilaterally in initiating the "We are Vanderbilt" campaign discredits the efforts of many individuals across campus working to craft a university-wide response to perceived intolerance and hatred in our community. Without the initiative and hard work of VUcept President Lauren Page Black, Multicultural Leadership Council President Joann Lee, Black Student Alliance Vice-President Courtney Williams and multiple university staff members within the Office of the Dean of Students, Office of the Dean of the Commons and Office of Greek Life, the campaign would have failed to achieve its purpose of facilitating a united campus response to the acts of a hate-spewing minority.

Instead of characterizing "We are Vanderbilt" as a reaction to widespread intolerance within our campus, Warren should have acknowledged the true purpose of the campaign: to provide an opportunity for students to reaffirm their commitment to the values set forth in our Community Creed and offer individuals disgusted by online cowardice an outlet for publicly voicing their disdain for hatred in our community. The "We are Vanderbilt" campaign wasn't intended to dramatically unite our campus under an illusion of respect and acceptance; it simply proved we were together all along.

'We Are Vanderbilt' demonstrates campus unity

College Gossip Site JuicyCampus Handed Subpoena

College Gossip Site JuicyCampus Handed Subpoena-The college gossip Web site known as JuicyCampus.com has been served a subpoena by prosecutors in New Jersey. The subpoena is in regards to the inability of the site to restrict hateful and offensive content submitted by users.

The site was launched just last fall and is a very popular destination for college students.

The slogan of the site is “Always anonymous, always Juicy.”

It seems though that things are going way beyond your typical rumors of who slept with who, who got drunk, etc.

New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram stated that since JuicyCampus claims to not allow any offensive material to be posted on its site, it may be in violation of the Consumer Fraud Act.

The advertising agency of the site, Adbrite, was also subpoenaed. They have already cancelled their contract with JuicyCampus.

Milgram stated that there is an immense amount of offensive and hateful material posted on the site.

She stated that the material attacks students on their race, sexual past, and more.

JuicyCampus is very different from other social-networking sites, claiming that it does not track users or try to ID them, it is all anonymous, and it seems that because of this, things are getting a bit too juicy.

College Gossip Site JuicyCampus Handed Subpoena

juicy gossip

It was the most brilliant of light bulbs that spurred the creators of Campusfood.com to say “Hey, college students love to eat, and love when food shows up at their door.” It also goes without saying that there is a difference between the era B.F. (before Facebook) and now, when you can figure out if you and your friend-with-benefits are “in a relationship” or if “it’s complicated” with the help of a virtual middleman. Ratemyprofessor.com may have given you the priceless gift of a semester staring at an Adonis/Venus de Milo of a lecturer, after you saw him/her deemed hot with a chili pepper. There are simply some ubiquitous websites nowadays that have really left an indelible mark on what it means to be a college student.

Here’s hoping that Juicy Campus does not become one of them.

Meant to conjure up images of a real life Gossip Girl running around Ithaca with the most enticing and sexiest tidbits about our own Blair Waldorfs and Serena Van Der Woodsens, Juicy Campus has even in its infancy harmed the members of the Cornell community beyond any entertainment it will ever provide. More than a few Cornellians have had their names completely sullied without any benefit of knowing who denigrated them on this virtual slambook, and without any opportunity to speak out on behalf of themselves. Never is there a requirement to substantiate any serious claims; never is there any oversight by administrators.

Despite the fact that slanderous accusations pervade the site, the privacy policy of Juicy Campus is only meant to protect those who post, and those about whom posts are written have no special rights. Bored@, which began at Columbia and then spread to similar schools (including Cornell) and was meant to entertain those studying at the library, had a similar anonymous message-board layout, but specific names of students could not be used. If they were, the website administrators were supposed to promptly delete the posts to protect those who would potentially take offense. And there is much on Juicy Campus that is beyond offensive.

Indeed it is true that by writing about Juicy Campus, we are giving them a certain amount of publicity, however negative it is. Still, every time someone looks at the website, there is a rather substantial chance he could find himself being ripped apart by people he can never confront. Beyond that, Juicy Campus really doesn’t give Cornell students any credit, thinking that our schadenfreude — our “pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune”— will override our sense of what is simply abhorrent and mean-spirited. Something needs to change about their policy because though Cornell students enjoy the weekly installments of Serena and Blair’s misadventures, we’d rather not live in the plastic world of the movie Mean Girls. And really, why do we even care?