Monday, February 19, 2007

Review of a previous topic

A little over a week ago we discussed the Doe v. XYZ case. I recently came across an article that holds some relevance to the discussion that was held in class regarding that case. This scenario involves an employee of IBM who was fired because he was caught using sexually explicit chat rooms while at work. In addition, this employee was allegedly warned about his behavior after a similar incident had occurred four months earlier. The employee described his visits to such chat rooms as a sort of Internet addiction that developed out of psychological trauma endured in the Vietnam war. According to the employee, this addiction serves as a form of disability, and therefore argues that he should not be fired based on the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Although the article doesn't focus directly on the main topics we discussed in class (ownership of computer, monitoring visited sites, etc.), it does promote a legal theory that is relatively unheard of. Are Internet addictions a disability? What are the repercussions if it is found to be a disability? To focus this addiction in terms of college students, what if spending massive amounts of time on facebook, myspace, or other sites was somehow justified as being a disability?

The article can be found at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/02/18/chat.room.lawsuit.ap/index.html

3 Comments:

Blogger mel said...

Check out Sara's post from Sunday (same article). I think if internet addiction were recognized as a legitimate disability covered under ADA, there would be a flurry of new lawsuits. (And it's for this reason also that I think it won't happen anytime in the near future). Looking at this from an extreme perspective, a precedent recognizing internet addiction could lead to University students with documented internet addiction demanding more time for homework assignments, projects, and papers (similar to longer testing times allotted for certain disabilities).

5:50 PM  
Blogger Max Brown said...

I agree with what mel mentioned regarding the impact on students of such a precedent. Although an individual might really be addicted to surfing the Internet, that doesn't make viewing adult sites at work acceptable if they are prohibited by company policy. The situation is no different from an alcoholic or drug abuser not being allowed to work under some form of impairment if a company's policy strictly prohibits it. Also, I think that if an individual actually had some sort of an addictive personality, that could be documented before the employee ever started working, and those around that employee would know to be sympathetic or understanding of that individual's situation.

9:20 PM  
Blogger Jeremy Byers said...

Just thought you would like to know that this was brought up on Leno the other night about his guy saying that it was a disability in a sense with his addiction. Just thought it was funny, you can only imagine the jokes that followed.

2:34 PM  

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