Newsweek: the Catsouras Family

Q: Should this family win their legal battle, or is this truly a free speech issue? if this had been one of your family members- how would you feel? Most news agencies would not show these photos- should they be allowed on the Internet- or does the Internet need to remain unfettered?

A: Currently, the Catsouras family is fighting in order to rid Nikki's horrific pictures of the Internet. Their lawsuit with the CHP has to do with the leaked photos from two of the officers who were at the scene and the spread it caused throughout the Internet. Yes, the family has every right to try as hard as they can to rid as many of the pictures that they can, but unfortunately, they will never be able to completely abolish them or even prevent the spread from becoming even greater. The do have a right to press a lawsuit against the CHP for spreading the photos to their own friends and family even if their intentions had nothing to do with harming the Catsouras family. Those were closed photos from an accident site that had no reason to be spread.

The family's fight against the CHP goes farther then just a free speech issue. Because of the publicity, the family has been harassed with photos through email and now they all are forced to go through everyday cautiously trying to avoid stumbling upon them once again accidentally. The multiple issues that the family is suing the CHP for have every reason to be. The privacy invasion, infliction of emotional harm, and the many others all have occurred because of two officers attempts to create public services to prevent the same fate happening to others as it did to Nikki. Others who have created MySpace accounts or websites in Nikki's name only to harass and make rude, unnecessary comments should be thrown into the lawsuit as well for their invasion and infliction they have caused as well. It is one thing to post a funny photo of a pet or friend on a web page or send in an email, but a complete other when it is a picture of a car crash with a young girl hanging out the window with an almost decapitated head. That has much more to do with then just a Freedom of Speech issue.

I believe that the Catsouras family has every right to sue the CHP for the charges they have, but they cannot sue for the fact that the photos were spread or the mention of other people. It is uncontrollable and can never be stopped, but their attempt to avoid this emotional harm for other families that will experience the same unfortunate mishappening is a valid fight. The spread happened because of one simple attempt to avoid another accident of the same degree, but it went a lot further because of the technology we contain in our world today and the amount of publicity and privacy that is uncontrolled.