And get away with it, too. JuicyCampus—whose Duke-graduate founder, Matt Ivestor, declined to comment for this story—isn’t sponsored by the schools it covers, so administrators can’t regulate it. Neither does the law. Such sites are protected by a federal law that immunizes Web hosts from liability for the musings of their users—as long as the hosts themselves don’t modify content. (And firmly establishing the identity of an individual poster would be next to impossible.) The rationale is to protect big companies like AOL from the actions of each and every user. But as a consequence, it means victims of a damaged rep have little legal recourse. “Courts tend to have antiquated understandings of privacy,” says Daniel Solove, an expert in cyberlaw and the author of “The Future of Reputation.” “Until that changes, we’re going to see this keep happening.” At present, there’s only one sure way to rein in a site like JuicyCampus: persuade everyone to stop using it. But you don’t need a college degree to figure out that won’t happen.
