The Indiana Court of Appeals has found that a juvenile’s MySpace postings under a fake profile in the name of her school principal is constitutionally protected free speech. The false profile attacked the school’s body piercing’s policy.Hat tip to Charles Wilson at the Associated Press.

In my view, the Indiana appellate court missed the boat. The issue wasn’t free speech. It was impersonating the principal and posting the views under his name. That is not constitutionally protected.

Let’s take a Texas case as an example of why the distinction is important. An assistant principal is suing two students and their parents because of a MySpace profile that falsely identified the assistant principal in a fake profile as a lesbian and contain sexually explicit content. Once again, the issue isn’t free speech. It is impersonation of another online.

This is more than a teen prank. The reputations of these educators are at stake. As for the teens, a trip to the woodshed is in order…both for them and their parents.

About the Author

With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 14 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of Internet Marketing Legal Secrets Revealed. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.