Regarding a website like JuicyCampus, the National Rifle Association might say something like, “Gossip blogs don’t assassinate character. Students who post anonymous slander about fellow students assassinate character.” And that, indeed, is true.

But a popular website set up expressly to encourage college students to dish about their classmates---who’s gay, who’s a slut, who smells bad, who cheats, on and on ad nauseum---lacks a feature that guns undeniably have: some legitimate purpose. JuicyCampus, on the other hand, has none. It has the idiotic self-described mission "of enabling online anonymous free speech on college campuses" as if 1.) there is any shortage of opportunities for anonymous free speech on the internet 2.) there is any virtue to anonymous free speech, besides the fact that it is free and 3) that the site actually has any purpose more lofty than supplying an unpoliced virtual graffiti wall, where the vicious, cowardly, and mean-spirited can write bile along the lines of “Beverly Zmudnik has sex with goats” without accountability or regulation.

As simple, unethical ideas go, this one is certainly clever. Not only do bored, nasty, mean students use the site, their victims do too, so they can find out what horrible things are being said about them. Some employers have reportedly checked the site for character information on graduate job applicants, which doesn’t speak well for them (do they check subway walls, too?), but it also shows how damaging the site can be. And what do we put on the other side of the ethical ledger to argue for redeeming value? Not much. It provides a way to hurt people, get even for real or imagined slights, and cause trouble without risk. It provides entertainment for those who enjoy watching others get savaged, proving that the one entertained couldn’t recite the Golden Rule with the help of a teleprompter. Oh yeah, I almost forgot: it preserves that Holy Grail of the web, anonymity, which permits every pusillanimous keyboard jockey to be vulgar, insulting, hurtful, stupid and a bully without ever taking any responsibility or exhibiting any respect or fairness to others.

The site itself is like that. Oh, we know some cyberslug (a Duke-educated cyberslug---that’s right, there’s an actual person writing this: Jack Marshall…that’s J-A-C-K (space) M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L) named Matt Ivester created the site, which is making him rich at the expense of thousands of weeping co-eds and humiliated undergrads. But his site is protected from liability by the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which does not require sites to police posts. And the people who post the comments are generally guaranteed protections under the First Amendment. They could get in trouble for false and defamatory allegations, but then that can only happen if they reveal who they are.

It’s a bad website, inspired by irresponsible motives, designed to attract unethical people, who use it to hurt others.

The First Amendment has seldom been so trivialized and ill-used.