South Korea's highest court unanimously ruled that South Koreans are not required to register their user names or other online account information in order to make comments on the Internet. This reaffirms that South Korea will protect freedom of speech on social media and other online platforms.
When applying this law to universities in South Korea, it appears to mean that public school students are not required provide their schools their social media user names or other digital account information. In a democratic society, public schools may not require their students to register their Facebook accounts, Twitter handles, and/or other social media credentials in order to obtain or keep their scholarships. It is clearly unconstitutional for a U.S. public university to demand that their students register their digital or social media usernames or online persona with a university or a third party in order to keep their scholarship or participate in extracurricular activities. This protection extends to all students including student-athletes and other students on scholarship.
Unfortunately, there are multiple U.S. public colleges and universities that are following the advice of self-described social media consultants who are pitching schools on requiring their student-athletes to register their social media usernames with their schools and/or Facebook Friend a coach and/or download social media monitoring software so the school may identify the student's online persona and track their online behavior.
Any social media consultant that advocates schools utilize a social media monitoring service to track their student-athletes' online behavior is a snake oil salesman that should not be trusted because this advice may create tremendous legal liability for those universities and individuals who follow this advice.
To learn more about these issues you may contact me at www.shearlaw.com.
Copyright 2012 by the Law Office of Bradley S. Shear, LLC All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment