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Henry Jenkins has recently praised the Student Press Law Center, whose advocacy takes issue with the Constitutionality of the Deleting Online Predators Act, which blocks access to social networking sites like MySpace from schools and libraries. A Report on the Future of the First Amendment also takes up the anti-DOPA case.

Of course, I like the SPLC for a much less noble reason. Recently they came to the defense of the blog Ivygate, which has been covering the truly jaw-dropping digital rhetoric of the Yale senior -- and apparent pathological liar -- Aleksey Vayner, who had tried to get a job in high finance with a jaw-dropping video of himself enacting a montage of male fantasies (karate-chopping bricks, ballroom dancing with groveling women, and weight lifting cartoonishly huge quantities). He also submitted an inflated resume that included a self-published book (Women’s Silent Tears; A Unique Gendered Perspective On The Holocaust) and a bogus charity.

This is all part of why I think that digital rhetoric should be a required subject in even the most prestigious Ivy League colleges.

YouTube has pulled the job application video, and Vayner has threatened Ivygate with a "cease and disist" letter on the grounds of a DMCA violation, but the SPLC has encouraged Ivygate to hang tough and keep up the hard-hitting reporting.

Vayner now has his own Wikipedia entry, should any of his fellow college students need a subject for a term paper. (I checked Facebook and discovered that he's inspiring many copycats, including a few presidential candidates.)

Update: Later this week the college news outlet Daily Pennsylvanian ran their exclusive interview with outraged republican Congressman Curt Welden on YouTube. It just goes to show how important the digital rights of student news organs can be in an era of transmedia culture.