Kid kicked off basketball team for hair

And besides all that, there's really not much gray area "legally" when it comes to putting a kid's picture in the paper regarding anything other than a private matter. The First Amendment applies the same in every state. Now, ethically? Journalistically (not a word?)? from a business and social responsibility standpoint? All those may be gray areas, but not legally.

 

When I was in high school (circa early '80s), my baseball coach wouldn't let you on the team unless you had a short haircut and no facial hair.

We sucked it up and got a haircut.

Of course, my junior year, we got an assistant coach with a big-ass cookie-duster and he didn't have to shave it.

 

In wrestling, there is (or was when I wrestled) an actual rule that did not allow hair to touch a shirt collar. Facial hair was not allowed either for safety reasons.
I imagine, especially with more girls wrestling, the rule has changed. I believe kids can have long hair as long as they wearing a bathing cap or something like that.

 

First off I just want to make clear that before you read the rest of this, I'm not trying to sound like an ass. Innocent things I say on message boards sometimes come off that way.

In therms of the photo rights, keep in mind that Prep Rally is a Yahoo!/Rivals.com blog. I don't know if you follow The Dagger, Dr. Saturday, Ball Don't Lie or the other Yahoo!/Rivals.com blogs, but grabbing images and giving them credit is pretty common. Had this been a printed work, then you're absolutely not going to use a Google image search (though one time I had someone apply to work for me and their clips from a former college paper had a photo of A-Rod and the image was "courtesy of Google Images" ... another "courtesy of Photobucket." It had me a little baffled, but that's a whole other Oprah).

And with the minor thing, we ran into this whole legal thing one time when an angry parent was mad that their kid's photo was in the paper without consent and ended up having to use our attorney. Ultimately, we just changed our policy when it came to obviously underage folks photo's running in print (of course, whenever I cover community events with little league, I always check with the kid's parent before I interview the 12 year old girl who just won a race). I wish I could agree that Freedom of Speech was this giant umbrella we sometimes act like it is, but if that were the case, we'd have Federal Shield Laws to protect us, versus state-to-state dependence.

I hope that clears any confusion up.

 

Coach has the right to impose whatever rules he wants.
Of course, he looks like a complete ass, and his 'tude is probably going to discourage some other kids who may otherwise have played for him, but coach is within his rights, as I am if I decide to wear plaid pants with a Hawaiian shirt.

 

Google images are NOT rights-free, something none of the writers on our staff seem to realize no matter how many times I slam my fist on the desk about it, to the point I've finally given up on it.

I used to harangue people, on images bigger than mugshots, to at least email the rightsholders and try to get permission. "Aw, that's a pain in the ass." Well no shit sherlock, but so is getting sued.

If you use a copyrighted image without permisssion, and the legitimate rightsholders become aware of it and elect to pursue you legally, they win. Simple as that.

Credit lines do nothing to save you, in fact they may be used as evidence of intent to evade copyright. "Courtesy of xxxxxx" implies that you do in fact have permission to use the image.

Of course the odds of this are probably infinitesmal. So are the odds of an asteroid hitting the earth. In the words of Charlton Heston in "Armageddon": "It has happened before. It will happen again."

 

Now, after our brief Journalism-Jack,

I keep reading the coach is "within his rights" to impose his own personal grooming and dress standards on players.

What if the coach wanted to require that all players MUST wear ponytails? What if he demands they must wear frilly pink ballet outfits to school?

A coach is "within his rights" to demand his players always rotate the ball to the weakside when the defense overloads, to demand four passes before every shot, to demand players be at practice every day and run 50 windsprints if that's what he tells them to do, and to demand that what he says when it comes to his basketball team is THE LAW, absolutely and without discussion.

After that, his rights ain't shit.

 

Wrong. If he was winning games and pleasing his bosses he could make them wear ponytails all he wanted. It'd just be weird.

 

Coaches maintain discipline, which is part of on-the-court performance, in a variety of ways.

 

I've been a coach, for a good number of seasons.

My teams were very disciplined on the field/court. They did what I told them when I told them to do it.

I never once told any of them what to wear or how to cut their hair.

Because I understood my role was to get them to play the sport "the right way" and nothing else.

It's the job of parents to tell kids how to dress and groom until they get old enough to make some of those decisions themselves. Everybody else should keep their fucking fingers out of it.

 

Well, your way of coaching must be the only possible correct way.

 

Sorry to continue the threadjack here, but it is a journalism board.

I'm well aware that many BLOGS! steal the intellectual property of others and think that a link or credit line is adequate. As Starman pointed out, the rights holder may never come after you, but if they did, you'd lose. There's no distinction between BLOGS! (or other Internet sites) and newspapers in copyright law. The question is did you have permission? If no, was it a fair use? Taking an excerpt of someone else's news story might be a fair use. Taking an entire photograph, likely isn't.

And back to the minors: If a kid is in a place where he or she has no expectation of privacy when the photograph is taken, such as on the court during a basketball game, then there is no legal issue with you running the photograph just because it has a minor in it. You may have an ethical or moral duty to ask permission first, depending on the circumstances, but you have no legal one.

Also, if freedom of speech were, as you described it a "giant legal umbrella we sometimes act like it is" then there would be no need for a federal shield law. It's precisely because freedom of speech does not protect journalists against the things that we believe it should (being forced to reveal identity of sources) that many journalists have pushed for one. May we someday yet get it.