(long rant)

You're right Jim. Every business and gov't. network should have a proxy, a firewall, filtering software, and an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) signed and in place or a combination of those. Otherwise they can be held liable in at least a civil suit for failure to perform due diligence to block offensive content. Most of the IT guys I've come across from schools have this stuff in place and it is so tight you can't get webmail or do research on breast cancer.

That said, I think any user of the Internet is personally responsible for what they look up. It is fair to assume that most everyone is aware that there is porn on the internet and that you must be careful. We don't know all the facts in the case, so it is very likely that the substitute was a newish Internet user and was not necessarily surfing porn in a class. How dumb would that be? She probably panicked when the pop-ups appeared and asked the students for help. Then several more get up and there is your ten students. An experienced investigator, like on of us may be able to find that one of the students sabotaged her computer.

What a cruel joke that she could be sentenced for up to 40 years for something so dumb, besides the fact that she will likely never teach again. Mandatory sentencing in some cases may be equated to Zero Tolerance policies that you may run into. Either the judge has no flexibility to be lenient or some wily prosecutor out to make a name for himself goes for the max. In any case, I'd assume that the judge, jury, prosecution, defense are not fully educated on internet technology and how these things can happen.

-----Original Message----- From: Jim Herrmann Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 11:33 PM

Wouldn't even need Linux. Firefox alone probably would have prevented. Wouldn't the IT guy who set up the firewall that didn't block these sites be as liable as this woman. It's definitely a bullshit conviction.

My $.02, Jim