Unsure if you’re being savaged in cyberspace? Google your name every few months and see what pops up.
CTA members who find themselves impersonated on a site like MySpace or ridiculed on YouTube should immediately notify the operators of those websites. They should also immediately notify their union representative and their school administrator.
In some cases school officials believed erroneous information included on such sites to be accurate and responded by punishing their employees. For example, a Colorado teacher was impersonated on MySpace by students who used his name to send e-mail with lewd content to other students. Even though he was later exonerated, the teacher was suspended from his job in the meantime.
“If someone is writing about you or pretending to be you in a blog, on a MySpace page or other website, you can e-mail the person who did it and tell them they do not have your permission,” says Livermore Education Association President Keith Pickering-Walters, who serves as CTA’s liaison to Computer Using Educators (CUE). “You will have to open an account on that site to send them e-mail. Tell them that you strongly suggest they take it down. Then contact the website administrator, your union representative and your school administrator.”
It’s important to act quickly, because when students impersonate teachers or put videos of them on YouTube without their consent, it can damage a career.
“They may capture 30 seconds in a classroom on video that becomes the world’s impression of you,” says Pickering-Walters. “And the world doesn’t see all the safety precautions you have in class, or all the previous work that you’ve done with students that has led up to the 30 seconds on the Web. For example, you could be doing a dramatic reading of Huck Finn and maybe people will think you’re doing a rant of personal or political beliefs.”
In its “fine print,” the YouTube website stipulates that written permission must be obtained from every person who is “identifiable” in a video to be aired on its site. And school employees have used that to their advantage. One Livermore teacher who was filmed without his knowledge and posted on YouTube complained to the site administrator, and the video was promptly removed.
It’s more difficult to get a phony MySpace page removed, say teachers, since a new “profile” can be posted the next day. MySpace requires a subpoena before releasing the name of the person who is impersonating you. Those who have attempted to obtain subpoenas have sometimes met with frustration at the hands of local law enforcement and even the FBI.
Help, however, may be on the way. CTA has agreed to take one teacher’s case as a precedent and, if the association wins, it may be easier for teachers to have impostor sites removed in the future.