Lawmaker: Make youth violence video illegal

A Suffolk County lawmaker plans to introduce legislation to make it illegal to post online videos of minors involved in violent acts, with offenders facing jail time and fines.

Legis. Steve Stern (D-Dix Hills) said Thursday that he was prompted by an incident earlier this school year in which a fight at a high school in the Half Hollow Hills school district was filmed and posted on YouTube. Two boys involved in the fight and others who watched but failed to report it were suspended.

The person who took the video and the person who initially posted it also were disciplined by the district.

"When I was growing up, you got into a fight in the schoolyard, and you got a black eye or a bloody lip and . . . you shook hands and you moved on," Stern said in the administrative center of the Half Hollow Hills school district. In the era of the Internet, a "digital black eye can last for years and years."

But Jennifer Carnig, communications director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the measure raised significant First Amendment issues.

"While well-intentioned, this proposal appears to be so overbroad as to sweep up both important and innocent postings," Carnig said. "Whether it be a cell phone video of police abusing teenagers or a simple prank that would normally end up on 'America's Funniest Home Videos,' this legislation appears to treat them all with the same broad brush."

The measure would make the posting of videos online of minors as perpetrators and/or victims of violent acts a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and/or a year in jail.

Half Hollow Hills Superintendent Sheldon Karnilow said he called Stern, who also is a parent in the district, after the YouTube incident to see what preventive action was possible.

"In today's society and with the onset of new technologies, students are given the opportunity to post information which is potentially harmful to their fellow classmates," Karnilow said.

Half Hollow Hills East High School senior Zack Zadek called it an "issue that affects every student. That ongoing risk can have ramifications for the rest of your life."