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Politicians and the Cyber-Bully Pulpit
Regular Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton has cyber-bullying on his mind; that and the laws proposed to deal with it. His article begins: "The authors of most of the recently proposed anti-cyberbullying laws have been invoking the tragic case of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old girl who committed suicide in 2006 after being harassed online by an adult neighbor posing as a cute 16-year-old boy. Unlike the bluster of politicians grandstanding to outlaw swearing on the Internet, the outrage and frustration of lawmakers in this case is at least understandable, especially after the FBI announced that the family that created the phony profile and caused Megan's suicide could not be charged with any crime. But the focus on Megan's case raises two questions: (a) whether it is fair to invoke Megan in the name of passing the laws, and (b) whether the laws are a good idea in general." Read more below.
For once, the invoking of the teenage victim of online stalking is probably not completely cynical. Sometimes, it is. In 2002, after 13-year-old cheerleader Christina Long was apparently killed by someone she met online, politicians purported to honor her memory by passing the "Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act" to create the .kids.us domain space exclusively for content aimed at children 12 and under. Nobody with an ounce of sense could have truly believed that the existence a .kids.us domain would have prevented Christina Long's death (and certainly not the people who knew the facts of her case, since the police found that she had been actively looking for older sex partners online). In Megan Meier's case, at least the proposed laws are on-topic, and the authors probably really believe they will help. But will they?
Consider two laws proposed by state senators in Megan's home state of Missouri. Senate Bill 762, introduced by Sen. Yvonne Wilson, would require schools to adopt anti-cyberbullying policies. Sen. Scott Rupp has introduced Senate Bill 818, which would prohibit "cyber harassment" defined as conduct which "serves no legitimate purpose, that would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and that actually causes substantial emotional distress to that person", with increased penalties if committed by an adult over 21 against a minor under 17. Obviously the Wilson bill would not have applied in the Meier case, since the harassment was not committed by a real school student, but the bill could have still been inspired by an attempt to prevent future incidents caused by real students. The Rupp bill could apply to any teen-on-teen or even adult-on-adult harassment. So what actual effect would they have?
The Wilson bill punts the question by simply requiring school districts to set up anti-cyberbullying policies, but not specifying what would be prohibited or what the consequences would be. This is not to say that the state legislature should have micro-managed what school districts should prohibit, but there's no way to find fault with a bill that leaves the decisions up to someone else. However, any policy that attempts to regulate off-campus conduct would run into constitutional problems, as most cyber-bullying occurs outside of school (since Facebook and MySpace remain blocked to most students).
That leaves the Rupp bill, which is far more detailed, but still less than specific as far as people being able to read it and know in advance what kind of conduct is prohibited. Would it really criminalize any messages sent between teenagers that led to hurt feelings? The bill says that it does not apply to "constitutionally protected activity", falling into the general category of bills that say "This bill prohibits XYZ except that anything protected by the First Amendment isn't prohibited", supposedly so that people can't say the bill violates the First Amendment, but which really means that nobody knows what's allowed. The bill helpfully explains that "such constitutionally protected activity includes picketing or other organized protests", but since most cyberbullying does not take the form of tormentors sending their targets pictures of picket signs reading "ERIC IS GAY", this still doesn't help to determine what is permitted.
But there's something much more worrisome here. The conduct prohibited in the bill doesn't depend entirely on the message itself; it is restricted to content "that actually causes substantial emotional distress". Presumably this seemed like a good way to target the kinds of messages that caused Megan Meier to kill herself, without also outlawing all the other thousands of "You suck and I don't want to be your friend any more" sent between teenagers every day. But consider from the point of view of a message's recipient: At some point in the future, a victim of cyberbullying might know that other cases of cyberbullying have been prosecuted, but only in cases where they caused the victim "substantial emotional distress". So the law says to the victim: You can strike back against your tormentors, you can ruin their lives and let the world know what they did to you, but only if you harm yourself to prove they really hurt you.
And that's the basic Catch-22 of cyberbullying legislation: You can't prohibit meanness that causes someone to harm themselves, without also prohibiting the basic meanness that many teenagers put up with every day — unless you make the crime contingent on the victim actually harming themselves, in which case you've created hugely perverse incentives for them to do so.
I admit I don't have an easy answer either. The National Crime Prevention Center lists tips for teens to deal with cyberbulling: "(1) Refuse to pass along cyberbullying messages; (2) Tell friends to stop cyberbullying; (3) Block communication with cyberbullies; (4) Report cyberbullying to a trusted adult." Sorry, I'm sure they don't mean well, but if you're a teen and your problem is people saying hurtful things about you online to your friends, this is so unhelpful as to probably leave the victim feeling worse. 1 through 3 don't even address the problem, and "report it to an adult"? Most cyberbullying is not illegal.
So I would take the efforts that schools put into preventing cyberbullying — which may not deter the worst bullies, and which could be unconstitutional as applied to off-campus activity anyway — and reinvest them into teaching kids to deal with it: the self-esteem building programs which are much derided as political correctness run amok, but which can be judged a success if they help build resistance to bullying. Above all, put as much emphasis on tracking the results of esteem building programs, as on tracking the results of regular academic programs, so that statistics can be used to determine after the fact what kinds of programs are working best, rather than going in with preconceived notions. Learning how to deal with catty bitches ought to be treated as at least as important as learning the date when the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Out in the real world, there are still catty bitches, but nobody ever asks you about the Treaty of Ghent.
For once, the invoking of the teenage victim of online stalking is probably not completely cynical. Sometimes, it is. In 2002, after 13-year-old cheerleader Christina Long was apparently killed by someone she met online, politicians purported to honor her memory by passing the "Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act" to create the .kids.us domain space exclusively for content aimed at children 12 and under. Nobody with an ounce of sense could have truly believed that the existence a .kids.us domain would have prevented Christina Long's death (and certainly not the people who knew the facts of her case, since the police found that she had been actively looking for older sex partners online). In Megan Meier's case, at least the proposed laws are on-topic, and the authors probably really believe they will help. But will they?
Consider two laws proposed by state senators in Megan's home state of Missouri. Senate Bill 762, introduced by Sen. Yvonne Wilson, would require schools to adopt anti-cyberbullying policies. Sen. Scott Rupp has introduced Senate Bill 818, which would prohibit "cyber harassment" defined as conduct which "serves no legitimate purpose, that would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and that actually causes substantial emotional distress to that person", with increased penalties if committed by an adult over 21 against a minor under 17. Obviously the Wilson bill would not have applied in the Meier case, since the harassment was not committed by a real school student, but the bill could have still been inspired by an attempt to prevent future incidents caused by real students. The Rupp bill could apply to any teen-on-teen or even adult-on-adult harassment. So what actual effect would they have?
The Wilson bill punts the question by simply requiring school districts to set up anti-cyberbullying policies, but not specifying what would be prohibited or what the consequences would be. This is not to say that the state legislature should have micro-managed what school districts should prohibit, but there's no way to find fault with a bill that leaves the decisions up to someone else. However, any policy that attempts to regulate off-campus conduct would run into constitutional problems, as most cyber-bullying occurs outside of school (since Facebook and MySpace remain blocked to most students).
That leaves the Rupp bill, which is far more detailed, but still less than specific as far as people being able to read it and know in advance what kind of conduct is prohibited. Would it really criminalize any messages sent between teenagers that led to hurt feelings? The bill says that it does not apply to "constitutionally protected activity", falling into the general category of bills that say "This bill prohibits XYZ except that anything protected by the First Amendment isn't prohibited", supposedly so that people can't say the bill violates the First Amendment, but which really means that nobody knows what's allowed. The bill helpfully explains that "such constitutionally protected activity includes picketing or other organized protests", but since most cyberbullying does not take the form of tormentors sending their targets pictures of picket signs reading "ERIC IS GAY", this still doesn't help to determine what is permitted.
But there's something much more worrisome here. The conduct prohibited in the bill doesn't depend entirely on the message itself; it is restricted to content "that actually causes substantial emotional distress". Presumably this seemed like a good way to target the kinds of messages that caused Megan Meier to kill herself, without also outlawing all the other thousands of "You suck and I don't want to be your friend any more" sent between teenagers every day. But consider from the point of view of a message's recipient: At some point in the future, a victim of cyberbullying might know that other cases of cyberbullying have been prosecuted, but only in cases where they caused the victim "substantial emotional distress". So the law says to the victim: You can strike back against your tormentors, you can ruin their lives and let the world know what they did to you, but only if you harm yourself to prove they really hurt you.
And that's the basic Catch-22 of cyberbullying legislation: You can't prohibit meanness that causes someone to harm themselves, without also prohibiting the basic meanness that many teenagers put up with every day — unless you make the crime contingent on the victim actually harming themselves, in which case you've created hugely perverse incentives for them to do so.
I admit I don't have an easy answer either. The National Crime Prevention Center lists tips for teens to deal with cyberbulling: "(1) Refuse to pass along cyberbullying messages; (2) Tell friends to stop cyberbullying; (3) Block communication with cyberbullies; (4) Report cyberbullying to a trusted adult." Sorry, I'm sure they don't mean well, but if you're a teen and your problem is people saying hurtful things about you online to your friends, this is so unhelpful as to probably leave the victim feeling worse. 1 through 3 don't even address the problem, and "report it to an adult"? Most cyberbullying is not illegal.
So I would take the efforts that schools put into preventing cyberbullying — which may not deter the worst bullies, and which could be unconstitutional as applied to off-campus activity anyway — and reinvest them into teaching kids to deal with it: the self-esteem building programs which are much derided as political correctness run amok, but which can be judged a success if they help build resistance to bullying. Above all, put as much emphasis on tracking the results of esteem building programs, as on tracking the results of regular academic programs, so that statistics can be used to determine after the fact what kinds of programs are working best, rather than going in with preconceived notions. Learning how to deal with catty bitches ought to be treated as at least as important as learning the date when the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Out in the real world, there are still catty bitches, but nobody ever asks you about the Treaty of Ghent.
I feel sorry for the girl, but ultimately it was HER DECISION to commit suicide. You can't blame somebody else for your own actions.... there are a lot of assholes & bullies out there, and learning to deal with them is a part of life.
If the girl has been wiser, she could have
(a) mark the hate mail as "spam" so they'd go straight to trash
(b) ask her parents for help, if she didn't know how to do that
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
The inability/unwillingness to stand up for yourself does not necessitate a new law.
Just think of this scenario:
You begin a conversation with someone, and all of a sudden you start talking politics. The other person completely disagrees with you and decides to completely slam you, saying you are ignorant, and that you should kill yourself.
BOOM, you have a case! You take that person to court and clean up because they say you are a worthless human being. And guess what, they'd probably right!
I'm thinking about opening up a service that takes electronic messages, prints them out, and hand delivers them to a reciplient's address. Fortunately paper is still protected by the 1st Amendment and as long as everything printed within is true, it's generally not unlawful (minus death threats, etc.). How about this slogan:
Want to hurt someone's feelings? Do it on Paper(tm)!
On one hand we want to create a way to prevent things such as this suicide from happening. On the other we shouldn't take away any freedoms in the process. I don't however see how making a law of any kind pertaining to what is said/typed/exclaimed over the internet will be able to do both of these things.
My money would be on better education and awareness.
Did you just throw that in there at the end to see if people read your wall o' text "articles"? Regardless, you're kind of all over the place on this one. I'm not even certain what point you're trying to make.
Uh, isn't that the whole point of the internet?
Here I was thinking this was about robot presidents...
IMHO, the only way to prevent this sort of thing from happening is for parents to take responsibility for their children's actions and time online. When I was growing up, my parents were very controlling of what I was able to do online (not the the Internet was widespread - it was more limited to BBSs), and they continued this trend with the rest of my siblings (all younger). The end result was that we all had no issues with cyber-bullying, or any other online-related issues. Sure, we all got in trouble for trying to do things we weren't supposed to, but the end result was that we were better people because our parents took an interest in what we were doing and tried to make our time as constructive (read: not wasteful) as possible. So when I read something like this, all I can think is "What is a 13-year-old girl doing on the Internet?" When I was 13, if I were allowed to connect to an online service (I did use Compuserve at one point), I was under direct supervision. I was not allowed to keep my actions secret, and I am grateful for it!
.sig
Killing yourself because a neighbor taunted and humiliated you online?
You're probably not cut out to live as it is.
If so, should it matter that the adult who was seducing this young lady online was a woman as opposed to a man?
It seems that by committing suicide these days, you can influence the law making process.
I just can't bear another Viagra spam. If I get just one more I'll take a Viagra overdose, and become a spam martyr.
More legislation is not the answer--it will just make things convoluted.
"Bullying" is not really prosecutable unless it has some actual effect on the person being bullied, e.g. simple assault, petty larceny, slander, etc.
At present, yes, it appears that "inciting someone to commit suicide" is not specifically a charge, but a minor alteration to an existing law--e.g. putting something of that sort under "manslaughter"--would more than suffice to prevent that particular effect in the future. Thus, it would also cover situations where someone convinced someone else to commit suicide in person, rather than passing some new unneeded law.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
"caused her to commit suicide"? That's sooo much bullshit I don't even know where to start. If your committing suicide you have more problems than just an asshole neighbor.
There is a war going on for your mind.
you hurt my feelings!
One of the consequences of the rapid rise of the internet is the clumsiness of the responses to the problems that have arisen as a result. It also has resulted in responses that imagine new phenomenon in "cyberspace" that aren't fundamentally new. Bullying has been around forever. Bullying on the internet is new only because it is on the internet, there is nothing fundamentally different about it that would warrant coining a new term "cyber bullying," but yet here we are talking about it. Are there laws against bullying or harassment? If so, apply them to these cases, it's the message not the medium. The concept of "cyber bullying" among other fad terms will be looked at as quaint even 10 years from now, much like the panic over rock and roll music in the 50's.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Hey, the internet is not for kids. People need to get over it and realize it is something created by adults. It was designed for research, and now porn :) Children should not be allowed on the internet. This would solve a lot of the problems. No predators in online chat rooms, no problems on myspace, and no fat children because they are outside getting exercise as apposed to playing WOW for 15 hours a day.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
How are we going to tell the difference between this law and the OTHER Megan's law?
Don't we already have laws against false impersonation? My understanding was that the police chose not to prosecute the mother pretending to be the "cute boy", not that they couldn't prosecute her.
We don't need new laws, we just need to enforce the ones we already have.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Politicians is worth a warm bucket of spit. http://www.firedupmissouri.com/
Matt Blunt, the Gov. has been described as the worst governor in the US. The state's general assembly is dominated by right-wingnuts opposed to evolution, education and healthcare. The state is in a freefall economically and Roy Blunt (the Gov's father) was bragging about his opposition to the SCHIP bill at CPAC - when that act would have made a massive difference in the medical care available to the children in his district in Southwest Missouri (Springfield/Branson). Roy was Delay's K-Street project leader.
Let's not forget John Ashcroft -
Trust somebody who has watched these weasels - these laws are mere window dressing for their sponsor's reelection campaigns. Pure, unadulterated sophistry.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
If congress is so concerned about bullying, why not crack down upon it in the workplace where researchers estimate 90% (Management Communication Quarterly, 16, 471-501) of individuals experience Employee Emotional Abuse at some point of their employment, often leading to lost productivity and increased healthcare costs, where the vast majority of the time, the abuser continues this behavior after the victim leaves the organization to someone else. (e.g. the project leader who takes it upon himself to become everyone in the group's ad-hoc supervisor and foams at the mouth when he doesn't get his way or his arbitrary, non-enforcable preferences aren't met or is in direct violation of the union contract.) If "sexual harassment" is so illegal an unethical, why not any kind of workplace intimidation of a non-sexual (or non protected-class) nature not illegal in any way?
However, in private civil matters between ordinary citizens, Congress is only doing this (I hope) to win the "please think of the children" vote. I'm truly hoping that they don't honestly believe they are going to actually be able to stop it. This is the 21st century version of "Jamie is a whore" written on a bathroom stall.
Does it suck? Yes. Is the guilty party an asshole? Probably (if it was unprovoked). Does it need big government to save us from the mean kids? No. Period.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Treat cyber bullying like real bullying?
Just because it is done over an electronic medium doesn't make this "problem" new, in fact i would say it makes it less harmful than in "my day" of being beaten to a pulp in the locker room?
Is to post as many suicide-encouraging comments now, before it's illegal to do so.
Seriously though - while tragic, this kid's death shouldn't be blamed on the words somebody posted online. Would the Crocidile Hunter's memory be honored by eradicating all sting rays? Attaching the cause of suicide on anything other than the fact that someone seriously needed some help that they weren't getting is simple - and irresponsible.
Take off every 'sig' for great justice.
They make it stupid.
Spudtrooper, you are a complete waste of human space!! BURN IN HELL!
<legitimate purpose>What WoW guild should do you think I should join?</legitimate purpose>
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
The real problem isn't bullying. Bullying has been around in some form or another since the dawn of time. The real problem is a twofold difficulty in psychological care for tweens and adolescents. One being that professional care is VERY expensive in the United States; the other that there is a very negative stigma here about talking your problems out. The stigma problem isn't something that will go away any time soon, but the other problem can be blamed mostly on insurance companies. I've suffered from a neurochemical imbalance most of my life, and I've had to fight tooth and nail with my insurer to get them to help out with the bills. They still wouldn't though, so I went ahead and saw a doctor anyway, having my family help out. That isn't an option for most people, though. An everyday crime, at the feet of insurers.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
You can't hold someone responsible for what somebody does in response to anothers actions that's utter stark raving bonkers.
It's for the individual to take responsibility for _their_own_ actions.
Now you no longer get modded down, now you go to jail.
The Gospel according to lolcat
....as bullying in reality, if not worse.
I think they should do whatever they can to stop it, it's a disgrace!
The Internet may be for "adults" but my children "had to" use a computer from being 11 years old for their work. How many kids do you know that will not take a sneaky peek at something they shouldn't, everybody (who is anybody apparently) uses IM and social networking sites.
When anything happened online I told and taught my children to come and tell me, which they did. Obviously some sensitive soul is going to take it to heart, it hurts! So banning kids is the answer to these vile feckless idiots that bully? I think not!
In the name of sticking up for someone with autism, f**k you! Prejudiced bastard.... that is unlawful and linuc for dumm
You might as well say, why regulate broadcast TV for content? What is a 13-year-old girl doing watching TV?
For most kids today, the WWW sits right along side of TV, the telephone, and other electronic media. Yes, parents need to be parents, and pass that responsibility onto law enforcement. I wouldn't say a 13-yr old should be online without supervision, but that's like saying a 13-yr old shouldn't use the telephone without supervision.
You should who your child is talking to. Does that mean your on the other line, listening, when she calls a friend?
Boo-hoo, somebody who I don't know, have never met, and will never meet, called me a fatty online! Time to become an hero!
Please. When I was a kid I was fat and nerdy, back when being nerdy wasn't cool AT ALL. I was physically assaulted on a nearly daily basis, and if I had access to a gun, I'd have been the prototype for Columbine. So I have zero sympathy for somebody TYPING something mean. If you're that mentally unstable, the gene-pool is well served by your removal.
Don't mod me down, I may hurt myself.
Blame the parents is the mantra around here, and I agree in many cases. BUT, I don't think it is appropriate in cases where a child kills herself. That said, I think the issue here is about the cyber bullying. We can argue all day over whether the bullying caused her death, but this is not really the point. The question is whether we should allow this sort of behavior? I mean, a grown woman disguising herself as a 16 year old boy and then bullying her? Regardless of the outcome that is screwed up.
Just like to announce I'm starting an "ohnoitsbennett" tag. While it's obvious to anyone that tags are not shown on the front page by popularity, it may still help if everyone starts using it.
I don't like it. There's too much room for abuse by various groups who seek to control the behavior of others.
Sure, kids are more easily harmed by bullying than adults. That's why parents: (1) have a responsibility to monitor their child's interaction with peers and (more important) adults until they are mature enough to fend for themselves, and (2) see to it that they gain this maturity and independence as rapidly as possible.
Unfortunately, (1) doesn't work when parents are unmotivated to spend the time necessary to get involved with their kids lives. Better to let society bear the burden of bringing their kids up. Better yet, allow your kids the complete freedom to do what they want so that society is obliged to modify its behavior to suit your standards. Want to slow down traffic on the highway? Send your kids out to play on it and then become enraged when a couple of them get squashed.
(2) won't happen either. There are too many institutions, everything from the military to religious organizations, that depend on a supply of easily led little blank slates as fodder for their operations. Teach a kid to think for itself and many of these institutions would fail. Teach a teenage girl that cute, 16 year old boys are all basically dogs and the captain of the H.S. football team ain't getting laid as easily.
Have gnu, will travel.
First amendment.
Any law that attempts to regulate speech will be shot down. Or at least, SHOULD BE shot down (but with the esteemed members of the US Supreme Court these days, who knows what could happen? After all, they ruled that "limited" means whatever Congress says it means.
I wish I could have my country back. This isn't the same place I grew up in.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
While what those people who pushed her to the edge enough that she commited suicide did was not criminal it was definetely something that can and should be tried in civil court under tort law. Inflicting "Severe emotional distress" and "negligence" are at least two torts that apply here and the family of the girl should push forward on those grounds. I am not a lawer, I just took Business Law.
If I follow along the street, every day, shouting insults at them and taunting them I'm sure the police will find a way to arrest me on charges of harrasment and disorderly conduct and so on. Why wouldn't these apply to online instances? Is it a federal/state thing and the internet makes these situations a bit gray?
I know it's generally not good to reply to your own comment, but I thought I'd add a little perspective to my comment. The GP seems to be calling for some form of eugenics, which is ridiculous. If you run the numbers, you find that it'll take multiple generations to effect even a small impact on the gene pool; it's an endeavor that doesn't have a good payoff compared to the loss in human life and the effort put into it. In addition, there are environmental and cultural factors to consider that could be changed without stopping reproduction. Also, we've got to remember that eugenics was one of the primary justifications for the holocaust; I know about Godwin's law, but dammit, eugenics is one of the places that Nazi Germany should be remembered.
Feel free to mod me down now.
The Internet, now matter how you slice it, is not a common space to be policed by this judge, or that cop, or those senators. It is a world stage. Any teen can run into mean comments (we used to call it flaming) from ANYWHERE in the ENTIRE WORLD while they are on the Internet.
Enacting legislation against bullying and even cyberbullying is a criminal act in and of itself. The crime? Stupidity.
Sure, the Internet played a part in that teens death. The same way that electricity did!! It was a medium for the messaging.
The crime in this case, if there was one, is that human compassion and common sense did not show through on anyone's part. There is no law against being mean. If there was half our legislators would be in jail, lets not even talk about judges and bureaucrats OR clergy.
You cannot legislate morality. ever. period. Don't give me the killing is immoral and there laws against that. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are in the Constitution. Freedom from mean people is not.
It's all about education people. Educate the children, don't protect them like fragile little dolls that can't take a joke, or they will become that. Explain to them that the Internet is full of mean people, and the (I know you won't believe this next part) WORLD is full of mean people. If your children, friends, or neighbors are unable to deal with life in general, enacting mean-people-suck laws will NOT save them.
In a lot of ways, we have to look at this like the human species is part of the animal kingdom. That old saying 'survival of the fittest' has more meanings than one, and it is the truth whether you think it fair or not. When diseases hit a population, weak and feeble die first. In fact, during any time of stress it is the weak and feeble that die first. There is only one person that is responsible for her death - she is. Sure, others could have helped prevent it, but lets face it, we might as well blame this on all the young boys that didn't want to be her boyfriend, and this did not prevent her subsequent actions.
I am so tired of this kind of political/legislative rhetoric. If you are seriously thinking about this, why don't we all sit down and work out how to stop corporations from being mean too? Life is not fair, get over it. One case does not create a need for law. Now, if you wanted to have the schools start a group counseling session for people who felt victimized by bullies, go ahead. That is a positive step toward helping, not a negative one toward limiting other people's rights.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
softwar gangsters? glowbull warmongering execrable for sure. let yOUR conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/ts_alt_afp/ushealthfrancemortality;_ylt=A9G_RngbRIVHsYAAfCas0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate n
With formerly having dealt with "concerned parents" in an educational environment...you want to stop cyberbullying...haul the parents away...along with the kids. For some reason...people tend to forget that bullying does not happen in a vacuum. Many times...the parents are the cause of it & teach their kids to emulate the behavior the parents respect/use themselves.
Perhaps the best way to prevent any of this type of behavior beforehand is not letting people have kids in the first place. Just because you can have kids doesn't mean you should.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
If a person harasses a person or child to the point of suicide, does it really matter whether or not it was through the mail, over the phone, across the street, or over the internet.
The problem is the harassing behavior, not the medium through which the action occurred. Now, as the parent of a young girl, I am all for laws protecting minors from harassing adults. And one can really make the case that an adult posing as a 16 year old boy to taunt a 13 year old girl is a form of assault.
A teen age human being is just not emotionally capable of dealing with adult level harassment. It isn't her fault.
A think a civil suit should be filed, it won't get her back, but it will make a clear deterrent to anyone else that tries that crap.
Additionally, I don't believe we need any new laws to deal with this. At least I haven't personally seen a need yet. Generally, the existing harassment laws do just fine. They are already written broadly enough to cover "communications" via a number of methods. If someone communicates with you after you've told them you find their contact harassing, the law covers it, whether it's by phone, mail, in-person, or email. Special laws to cover the internet will only make it more difficult to do my job, and more importantly the job of the judges who ultimately make the decisions. And believe me, they are not well equipped to understand online material. Boiling it all down to "communications" is just easier. Court personal and prosecutors are already overworked in many areas, and complicating matters further will basically just mean that either other cases involving more traditional speech will have to be given a lower priority, or that none of it gets the attention it needs.
The one situation that's hard to handle is postings to other people's blogs that are unconnected to the recipient. Trying to analogize a blog posting is a bit difficult -- it's not like we've ever had much of a problem of people speaking bad of each other via physical billboards. But really, that's protected free speech, until it rises to the level of a treat. So essentially, the one situation a politician could conceivably attempt to control is basically impossible control due to that pesky constitution of ours (I know, politicians hate it).
Bottom line, leave the law alone. Stop grandstanding. And throw enough money at the judicial system to be able to spend enough time of each case, and give prosecutors the money to have enough people to pursue the cases that need the most attention. But I suppose it's a lot easier to "JUST THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!" by coming up with crazy laws, rather than simply funding courts.
Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress granted the power to declare bullying a Federal Crime. This ill-conceived measure is unenforceable and unconstitutional.
Why is Senator Wilson more concerned with internet harassment than the collapsing US economy or, you know, important issues?
Since when has any law enforcement ever not been able to trump up something to charge someone with? You can get busted for waking up in the morning, but somehow this lady can't be charged with anything, not even fraud, harassment, or aiding a suicide? Kevorkian somehow managed...
I don't get it. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are convicted on less than no evidence, for crimes ranging from the mundane to the obscure, just because a prosecutor has a small penis or the judge is senile, and the FBI can't come up with any crime to pin on her out of the infinite ones hidden in great dusty tomes of population control. Al Capone is seething.
I think the FBI needs to turn this over to the TSA, just so some idiot justice can be meted out. she can get sprayed, tased, strip searched, miss her flight, and be 'disappeared' - all in one easy stop.
That said, if some stupid fucking law based on the emotional stability of a chunky 13-year-old girl breaks my internets, I'm going to fucking shoot somebody, and it ain't gonna be me.
How did anyone possibly mod this uninformed and ill-conceived comment "insightful"?!?
Here's an interesting read on hiring "Millennials" and why it's not always such a good idea:
,backfire.
Quote: "They've been overparented, overindulged and overprotected."
Rather than protectingthechildren, why not simply hold people accountable for what they say?
If a blogger says something that allegedly isn't true and the defamed person can offer some evidence that it's not true, sue the blogger for defamation.
If he's hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, AND there are alleged false statements, and there is enough evidence that if unrefuted would conclusively prove defamation occurred, get a court to order the web site that hosts it to either:
1) get the author to step forward and counter any evidence that the content is defamatory, or if that fails,
2) remove the content
Note that opinions and factual statements are generally not subject to defamation or libel, nor should they be. "CowboyNeal is a jerk" should never be censored. "CowboyNeal is a murderer" or worse, "CowboyNeal shot JFK," on the other hand, is actionable.
Of course, #2 is very likely to
--
As far as children and teenagers go, if Naomi says Kim is a jerk because she won't kiss Paul who really likes her, then if it's true she won't kiss Paul Kim doesn't have much recourse against Naomi.
On the other hand, if Paul is her boyfriend and she does kiss him, Naomi is just telling lies and should be held accountable.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The situation is simple, in real life, there are crazy people that harass each other. I am sure that there are young boys who behave the same way that the neighbor did, but the difference is they don't pretend to be...they are little jerks. But how you handle life is your ultimate choice. He did not come over and kill her or supply her with physical goods to kill herself with. The parents are responsible for the death for not keeping an eye out for her.
Please don't get me wrong, I don't condone what the neighbor did, but I don't feel that it is a crime. It is a tort (regardless of law), however, and the family should sue for emotional distress.
"serves no legitimate purpose, that would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and that actually causes substantial emotional distress to that person",
This is the foot in the door for crazy religious zealots to bring lawsuits or try to get criminal action againt anyone the voices opinions that go against thier world view.
Case in point, the Islamic fundementalist attacks on Salman Rushdie.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1948375.ece
or the attacks on Doctors and patients of Abortion clinics.
Not to mention the furvor over Creationist vs Evolution.
This law if framed this way and passed could lead to anyone who states that the idea's expressed cause me "suffer substantial emotional distress". The only thing they would have to prove is that they were a "reasonable" person. In many juristictions this would be hard to say no, that good church going (temple going) God fearing person was not "reasonable" because they held "protected" religious views. It would be a really, really bad thing to have on the books.
You might say, no one would do that. That is not the intent of the law! Well if you look at the Child protection laws, they were passed originally using the cruelty to animal laws. Back then you could torture your children but not a horse. The law is a tool for lawyers and people with agenda's to use in creative ways to obtain their ends.
Sooo... the parents of a clinically depressed 13 yr old girl were allowing her to roam unsupervised on the Internet (a known-hostile environment)? I guess you must think they bear no responsibility in this tragedy and that it's somehow society's fault?
Zero tolerance is in our schools now. It should be online too. Just because you have the right to free speech doesn't mean you should abuse people online. Actually, online abuse is probably worse than real physical abuse in some ways since the abuse can end up in server archives and search site archives for life. Emotional scarring from bullying does eventually go away... but print online doesn't always go away all that fast. Plus it's libel, and in some cases assault, so bring it on. Lets get rid of all the abusers out there. People are always complaining about scammers, and phishing... but really, the only reason scammers and phishers get away with so much so long is because there is quite a bit of tolerance for junk that eventually leads to that. Getting tougher on the here and now little bits can help stop the criminal bytes down the road. Little Billy Bully who abuses facebook today could turn in to Big Billy Bob the online viagra and wonder drug salesman in a few years who also happens to run a pirate bay mirror.
A school near here has their own anti-cyberbullying policy. In their efforts to block cyberbullying they've also blocked just about half the Internet. Students are forbidden to use any email features and students are only allowed to use their sanctioned search engine, and they block other search engines with censorware filters attached to their gateways.
Could the parents pursue a Civil Lawsuit to hold the other family responsible for the child's death? Just like in the OJ Simpson case. The parents of Ron Goldberg and Nicole Simpson did not receive a criminal conviction for OJ, however they did win the Civil lawsuit that deemed OJ Simpson directly responsible for Ron and Nicole's deaths. http://www.cnn.com/US/OJ/simpson.civil.trial/index.html/ Here is the CNN story on that, incase you wanted verification that this actually happened.
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
According to the CDC (pdf) suicide is the third leading cause of death in the United States for people aged 15-24, and 8.4% of students in grade 9-12 reported making at least one suicide attempt in the past 12 months. Legislation against online bullying isn't going to help at all, but thanks to the overwhelming media coverage for this case we'll probably get it anyway. And no doubt it will use subtle wording that will make it applicable in a broad range of cases, "for the children".
After all, it's so much easier to treat a symptom than it is the underlying causes of teen suicide.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
deceiving, harassing and goading a 13 year old girl she knows is emotionally fragile is genuinely evil. she purposely set up a suicidal child's ego, attacked it, and then suggested suicide
folks, this is not free speech. this yelling fire in a crowded theatre
men are often understood to be more violent than women. this is true, physically. two men will punch each other in the face. but then be friends 15 minutes later, all forgotten. but if you talk about social violence, women are orders of magnitude more violent than men. their social violence consists of month long campaigns, is complex, and deeply conceived. the social lives of women, and girls, are filled with so much outright deceit, prolonged volleys of malicious rumors, name calling, undermining of confidence and egos, ampping of and landmining of social support networks... its quite mind bobbling for a man to consider the world of female social violence. we really are simpler creatures compared to women. women's minds light up when blood flow is analyzed, men only have little pinpoints of activity. baby girls start talking earlier than baby boys. female humans, daily, have many more times the amount of social interaction than men do. the social world is the female's realm, social life is extremely important to females. and within the social realm, women and girls wage evil and war that us stupid simple men don't even perceive or understand or know why it is so important. we simply detach into nonsocial worlds of thought and laugh or puzzle at what the heck is going on and why it could ever be so important. women stay engaged socially constantly and craft skillsets and layers of meaning and nuance we never develop. and their weapons of war, and their vulnerable weak points, are their ego, and their confidence. it's all about social esteem and hierarchy. and it is deathly, deathly important. you laugh. i laugh. women don't laugh at this. and 13 year old girls most definitely do not laugh at this. the pursuit of social esteem to them is essential to their entire lives, an all consuming conflict, that most of us men aren't even aware of, blissfully i would say
so, i will go out on a limb and run myself contrary to slashdot consensus: i say, yes, you should limit and outlaw speech which is of the extreme utmost social violence this woman is guilty of
you don't yell fire in a crowded theatre. additionally, i think it should be illegal for an adult to maliciously destroy the emotional well-being of a child. that is what this woman did: psychologically terrorize this girl. she knew she was destroying this girl's psyche, and she gleefully executed her socially. a grown woman directly suggesting a suicidal girl kill herself. and she did this after deceiving her and inflating her confidence by pretending to be an interested boy, then she gleefully popped the girl's ego like a balloon. she knew she was squeezing the life out of this girl, and she did it. folks: this is WAY WAY beyond the most stupid boorish racist politically partisan inflamed troll thread you have ever read on any forum in your entire online life
for men, which you will find mostly on slashdot, this sort of vicious ego assassination is a strange world. so when us men try to process the implications of the acts that led to this girl's suicide, we see nothing but an attempt at censorship of simple hate speech. because that is the only way we know how to classify this odd event of this suicidal girl and the adult female neighbor. because us socially stupid men are equipped with very simple tools of social behavior. we don't even understand the nuance to consider very well what actually went on here. so we dismiss laws about this evil as just attempts at censorship
no, this is not about censorship. it is nothing like that
it is a gleeful assassination, by an adult, of a child's ego and confidence, that this adult woman knew was suicidal, and directly setting the child up to commit suicide, through a deeply preconceived, executed, and longstanding campaign of soc
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Many of you have said that the parents should be 'moitoring' what this kid was doing online...she shouldn't be online without supervision, or even questioning that she should be online at all.
Oh, bullshit.
If you think for one second that you know every single word that your 13 year old child exchanges with someone else, or every person she talks to, you are seriously deluding yourself. Or you don't actualy have kids in the first place.
And if by some weird possibility you DO know what she's doing at every second of the day, you are seriously stifling her, and your picture is in the dictionary next to "Helicopter parent".
By all accounts, the mom DID know what she was doing (or thought, anyway). Talking with a boy at school. The 'talk' went on for some time, very innocently. Until they went nasty with it. And the teenage girl couldn't handle it. Teenage girls are walking bags of hormones. EVERYTHING is drama with them.
I'm not saying we need some special law regarding cyber-bullying. But the responsibility here does lie with the idiot/asshole adult neighbors.
I feel sorry for the girl, but ultimately it was HER DECISION to commit suicide. You can't blame somebody else for your own actions.
The reason society distinguishes between adults and minors is that minors are still maturing and aren't expected to make good mature, responsible, decisions nor be held responsible when they screw up. And adult maliciously and spitefully leading a minor to make a life-ending decision is utterly contemptible and an adult who does this should be held responsible.
If the girl has been wiser, she could have
If the girl was an adult yes. She wasn't. She wasn't even 'almost an adult' she was firmly still a child.
I only hope a wrongful death suit can be launched against the couple behind this:
From wikipedia...
"The death must have been caused, in whole or in part, by the defendant's conduct, even though there was no direct intention to kill the victim. The defendant must have been deemed negligent or strictly liable for the victim's death. Also the deceased has dependent party such as family members who have suffered from emotional and monetary damages as a result of the death."
I'd say the death was caused in or or in part by the defendants conduct, even though there was no direct intention to kill. I'd also deem the defendant negligent; adults should know better. And clearly the part about family members suffering emotionally is covered.
Anyone making any sort of "Think of the children"-based argument should be immediately considered to have lost the debate.
Only a Nazi would say something like that.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
There's enough blame to go around here, it's not mutually exclusive. I'm really upset by all the closed minded, dogmatic people sounding off in this discussion because they don't like the implications of one interpretation or another. Its as if you think that if you admit that anyone else besides the girl or her parents were to blame, Big Bad Government will step in and drink your milkshake.
Let's see if we can come to some sort of agreement on the basics here, everyone?
1.) The girl was unstable, and prone to suicide. The fact that she committed suicide should not even be part of the discussion because, as you say, it could have been a real boy doing this for any number of reasons.
2.) The parents could have done more to oversee her Internet activities, or at least talk to her about her feelings about this "boy."
3.) What the woman did was incredibly mean spirited and childish, and she deserves to have her entire community know what she did (which has happened, it seems.)
4.) Laws aren't going to fix this problem.
Honestly, for all the emotional hullabaloo in this thread, I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that ANYONE here disagrees on those four points. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It seems that people have forgotten about sticks and about stones. Ooooh, they called me a name and insulted me on the Internet. Oooh I care so much.
People seem to want to think that insults hurt, are dangerous, and are destructive. They really are no such thing. Please stop equating insults with bodily harm.
Incidentally, people seem to want to believe that this only exists in children. I run a business, and there are two kinds of clients that I don't get. The first are the ones that hear my pitch, hate my guts, scream and yell at me, tell me where to shove it, and I leave with nothing. The second are the ones that tell me they'll think about it, are very polite, return my folow-up calls with "we're still thinking about it", and never call me ever again.
I love the former group. The latter, the polite group, have me wasting time with follow-ups. The first group end things in seconds that the second group require months to go through saying goodbye. That's the adult business version of offensive speech. I hate it. But damn it's not illegal and never should it be illegal. Can you say nanny state?
You know, I don't like the idea that two people died as a result. But two is not enough to warrant anything but pity. Has anyone checked to see how many lives have been saved by cyber-bullying? How many teenagers have been satisfied by cyber bullying and as a result have stopped short of actual bullying? I doubt it.
Parents are responsible -- they should be teaching their children to not care about verbal insults. "I'll give you something to cry about."
The problem is that laws are indifferent tools with great power. The conditions they can be applied under are the filter that can prevent abuse of the tool. Carelessly-crafted conditions can allow the law (tool) to be used to hurt others. A law designed to protect people from online harassment would also allow offline injury (jail, prison) by those who would abuse the law. Unless the former greatly outweighs the latter, the law should not be created. These days in the US the greatest threat to most people is becoming not criminals, but people who abuse laws (or simply disobey them and get immunity by being a public "servant"). There doesn't seem any alternative to having judges who aren't crooked; no amount of legalese will make a law immune to being abused by such judges.
Back in my day teens picked on you IN PERSON especially if you were the type who knew what a modem was. Adults were largely BLIND to all but the extreme situations where it was in the open or one could show evidence; naturally, if a male was successful in catching the bully more than a few times the whole group would shun that male for being weak.
Now things are so bad that teens are not expected to be capable of doing anything and as a result (see Pygmalion) the teens are coming out less capable. It is unfathomable for me to see this as a serious issue; especially when the 1st thing I saw teens doing when 1st in a chat room was to childishly insult people for fun (like initially destroying stuff in a SIM game.) A teen who can not handle online attacks (personal or otherwise) surely can not handle the in person experiences. Teens have always been committing suicide; I'm sure "non-cyber" increased stresses contribute MORE.
I would not be surprised if the parents grasping to blame others for their teens SELF-DETERMINED actions were not the major contributing factor to their child's dysfunction. (Note: not a universal statement.)
Anybody notice frequent use of Cyber____ by technology ignorant people?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
...is it the place of the Federal Government to regulate here?
Should this not be the jurisdiction of each State?
I know that the Feds regulate against harassment in the workplace, but are there other examples of federal law concerning harassment in general? What makes "cyber" harassment special?
I'm not saying cyber-bullying should be allowed. But I am questioning whether it's within the federal government's jurisdiction.
We can debate all sorts of remedies but it comes down to your world view. Your view of right and wrong. My view of right is that you take responsibility for what you do. If you harm someone or create a problem you should become part of the solution.
A bully is not part of the solution. What defines them is passing their own psychological garbage on others rather than finding a way to take care of it themselves. It's cowardly to put it on someone else when you can't deal with it yourself. Psychological strength is a good trait to practice as well.
Making kids "bolster their self esteem" is like telling a rape victim if only she wasn't wearing that provocative outfit. It's not fair but this is yet another "new world". How much grief can you get in for "joking" at a airport security counter? or mouthing off to an officer for having a bad day? But yet we shouldn't focus on the bullies so much as strengthening the victims.
Sorry. Your view point is flawed.
Having, as an adult, to wrestle with cyber bullying of my wife from her messed up ex of 5 years ago (5 #@%&! years ago). Not only her ex but for some reason his wife as well as is quite annoying. It's taken a good year to get balance on these issues of people who spend several hours out of their day trying to weave chaos in our lives from afar. Realizing you have no resources you can call on until they happen to do what they have been threatening to do for years. It's not easy stuff to take. I wasn't looking forward to "living in highschool" now that I'm in my 30's but having to deal with it is very real.
A 5 minute montage or even a call to the cops offers no solution or even support. This is a very real issue. But it lies with the maladjusted not with "the weaklings" who should just grow a pair. Hopefully this poster will gain some perspective of the issue with which they speak.
Any legislation that concentrates on the flaw of the bullies will go much farther than trying to "bolster" the victim. I don't need any more rights, I need more options in how to deal with those who will not take care of their own problems.
The world is achanging and folks who can't see the big picture and how to deal with their own problems will become yet another part of our burgeoning prison population. It's not fair, just tis.
If you really doubt how serious the consequences of this behavior is then feel free to send your own hateful mail to the president or vice president and see who quickly your world turns. If it's good for the leader of the free world, who in theory is simply a citizen, then why it is not good for the rest of our citizenry?
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
I grew up in a very close family, and we have always had a computer in the house since the 80s. I built my own system when i was a teenager and my parents never touched it. Nor did they ever monitor what I was doing. We had rules, and I was expected to follow them. I pushed some boundries, but I knew when I was going too far and stopped myself. Not because I was scared of getting caught, but because I knew what was right and most of all I *RESPECTED* my parents enough to obey. Thats a very important piece of parental responsibility. Earn the respect and obedience of your kids, not by force but by love. That is the only "content filter" that really works. The only computer rule we really had was no internet in bedrooms. I had my computer in there for a while without an internet connection, (except for rare occasions when I wanted to download something really large over the modem i was allowed to run a cable in to download over night). I hated that for a while, but now realize that that simple measure prevents a vast majority of problems. All our computers are in public areas, both in my house and in all of my siblings. Not only because it prevents someone getting into trouble online, but also it encourages more "family quality time" together. I might be playing/working on my computer, but Im also having a conversation with everyone around me instead of being isolated in a closet. Laptops make this a bit harder, but it still is feasible. Even when someone is home alone, it is different than being in your own bedroom.
the concept of a nanny state that undermines personal accountability and parental responsibility is a concept that does apply to the purposeful, planned ego assassination of a suicidal girl by an adult woman who knew she was suicidal and specifically goaded her to commit suicide
the case has nothing to do with, and laws about it should have nothing to do with, censorship. it has everything to do with yelling fire in a crowded theatre: speech that has absolutely no implications whatsover on freedom of expression, and everything to do with malicious criminal intent
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Ultimately, the problem lied with the neighbor, who harassed a teenager until she committed suicide."
I appreciate your point, but the REAL problem is that a girl thought the appropriate response to internet harassment was to kill herself.
No amount of harassment will convince a well adjusted person with a solid upbringing that her choice was a good one, so blaming the harassers is, honestly, kind of stupid.
According to the summary above, the Rupp bill says..."...with increased penalties if committed by an adult over 21 against a minor under 17."
/.'ers -- how old am I? If you say something mean to me on /. that "causes severe emotional distress" to me, do you know if you are flaming someone under 17? For the record, I'm not, but determining that is not always an easy task.
Okay,
Furthermore, people respond very differently to comments other people make. Something that might make me roll my eyes in irritation might be enough to send someone else over the edge. For example, I once worked as an abuse administrator at an ISP. One night, we received a call from a parent who was threatening everything short of bodily harm against everybody they could think of because their teenage daughter had flipped out while reading her e-mail. Apparently, she had opened a porn e-mail without realizing what the message contained. That might make some of us annoyed, or even somewhat angry, but in this case it made the girl borderline suicidal. As a young child, this girl had been raped and the e-mail had essentially triggered a flashback.
Point being that it's essentially impossible to know for certain what stimuli might trigger any given person, particularly when conversing with strangers without the benefit of the feedback we get from body language. The tone of an e-mail or post can be mistaken. Cultural differences can cause someone to take offense at what was intended to be innocent. We can do our best not to offend others, but in an electronic world that does not know national borders, there's no way to be certain that we aren't going to seriously upset our on-line neighbors.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Bring back public stoning. Or at least public stocks and flogging. A lot of this kind of crap would disappear after the second televised act.
If you outlaw cyber bullying, you make sites like encyclopedia dramatica illegal:
Look, there's a site just to hate on Megan:
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Megan_Meier
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Megan_Had_It_Coming
Maybe they should be illegal.
The Oxbow Incident. Then:
Consider the mob that crushed its own at the Who concert.
The Rodney King riot.
The Detroit Riots.
The Chicago riots.
Mob rule - just slightly worse than Cheney & Bush.
It's for the individual to take responsibility for _their_own_ actions.
The child but not the adult?
Insightful? Hell, no.
The woman maliciously targeted a 13 year-old girl with the unmistakable intent to cause emotional distress.
She may very well have known - almost certainly did know - something of her victim's unique vulnerabilities. This was a deeply detailed and extended impersonation. To call it a "prank" is pure idiocy.
In any event, her conduct went far beyond mere negligence, far beyond mere recklessness and irresponsibility as the jury of your peers generally undrestands it.
I see no intelligible reason why she should not be judged legally responsible for the girl's death. The purpose of such a finding is, after all, to take private vengeance and mob violence out of the picture.
There can be no forgiveness for misconduct where there are no consequences for misconduct.
"SO every clinically depressed thirteen year old girl on medication should be standing up for herself?"
No, that's what her parents are for, and the legal system is an exceedingly poor substitute.
The FBI does not want to prosecute the case, but politicians want a new law, always indicates fucked up reasoning a/o other motives.
... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manslaughter
... I would hope (in the USA) that the adults committing the actions could be sued/prosecuted for the assault (mental, emotional, physical) and damages (distress, psychiatric care, custodial care ...) in a USA court.
...) then why can it not be prosecuted as negligent homicide [AKA: involuntary manslaughter]?
I am not a lawyer
From what I have read/heard adults did intentionally create/allow a condition/situation that any adult should know does cause harm to another individual. This was an intentional emotional, mental, and hate-crime assault on another person. If death does not result, then
If death results from speech/acts of hate (by drunks' cars, suicide
Where there is no intention to kill or cause serious injury, but death is due to recklessness or criminal negligence/behavior is this not negligent homicide in the USA? Recklessness or willful blindness as in a wanton disregard for the known dangers of a particular situation.
This path would prevent creating do nothing silly Internet laws for political chest-thumping during elections.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You know what helps when reading things? Reading them completely before getting in a huff and firing off an inaccurate response. Try going back and rereading what I wrote, and see if I actually disagree with you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
While it isn't exactly hard to feel some sympathy for the girl and her parents, just how reasonable is it to commit suicide over "cyberbullying" ?
Bringing new laws into play is just so inappropriate. I just don't see the need for any new laws here, couldn't the 16 yr old just be charged with garden variety harassment?
This just smacks of another opportunity for certain politicians to get face time and promote themselves as "doing something".
Laws are subtractive in nature. They don't grant rights as by default, something is legal unless declared illegal by law. We lose a little freedom every time a law is passed. I'm not advocating anarchy of course, but automatically creating new laws as a kneejerk reaction is kind of like just throwing money at a problem - it doesn't necessarily fix anything.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
16-word summary: New laws proposed to combat cyber-bullying. They'll likely be ineffective. Kids should just get over it.
Bennett,
You're a geek. You've got above average intelligence and a deep desire to make things, everything, better. You've done some great things so far. You've got more ideas that you're pretty sure will help. You want to share these ideas with the world. Trust me, we all know how you feel. However, the rest of us have little ego blogs and post our ideas there. That way, if they're bad ideas, as they frequently are when one dabbles in fields one only has a shallow knowledge of, they can be quietly ignored. If they're good ideas, someone else can submit it to Slashdot where it will be reported. There are two levels filtering the good from the bad: readers who do submissions and the Slashdot editors. It's imperfect, but seems to work.
You, however, are buddy-buddy with Slashdot's editors, so you skip those important filters. Random Slashdot readers aren't acting as a filter. Furthermore, at last some of the editors are chummy with you, eliminating them as reliable filters. The result: you get an artificial level of visibility and respect that you simply haven't earned.
Please, go post your ideas on a blog like the rest of us. If your ideas are really all that, they'll be back on the Slashdot's front page in no time. If not, you'll just have to learn to live with only being famous for your security and freedom of speech work.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Computers aren't toys, they're powerful machines. You do *not* give a child unfettered access to a powerful machine. You wouldn't give your kid chainsaw, a toaster oven, or even a telephone if you didn't think they were ready to handle it. Why do parents give children who can't handle the worst of the internet, unsupervised access to it?
Sorry, that what this boils down to. I'll bet there are plenty of adults who have hurt themselves or others because of something they read on the internet. Why don't we clamour for laws to protect them? Because we figure they're adults and, if they can't handle the internet, they probably can't handle the public library or reality itself - and common sense tells us that no law will save them.
But when it's a cute little kid - oh, won't someone *please* think of the children!
I agree that in cases like this someone should think of the children: the freakin' parents. Not the ISP's, not RIAA, not the Senate - the damn parents. Don't put your emotionally fragile 13 year old online by themselves - how hard is that to do?
Barring a common sense solution, I have a better short-sighted one that a ".kid" TLD. We should set up TLD which is *just* for cyber-bullying: ".fag".
BTW - I mean that in the "South Park" sense of the word, not the Revered Phelps sense of the word. Ask anyone under 14 what the word means, and you'll either get the South Park definition, or meet someone who knows enough about the world to avoid the TLD in the first place. Cheers.
IMHO I think the software is poorly designed.
Obviously, those parents and esteemed legislators have never read the comments on Slashdot. We're all going to jail.
And what if a real 16 yr old boy had said, "I don't want to be your boyfriend because people are saying you're mean"? Ok, I agree. That's totally implausible. Anyone could tell that's a 42 yr old woman talking.
Son, someday all this will belong to your ex-wife.
That's NOT what laws are for at all - it may seem that way, but that's the wrong way to look at it:
Laws are there to protect your *rights*.
That's all. Simple as that.
The fact that this is in practice usually happens to mean protecting the weaker from the stronger is almost incidental to that, and actually the notion of "protecting the weak" is FAR more broad than "protecting your rights" - dangerous even, for various reasons.
There are plenty of solid, real-world examples demonstrating why your reasoning is wrong that happen in many countries where otherwise well-meaning people want to "protect the weak" with laws. Take gambling - it is often argued that casinos are taking advantage of people who are 'too weak' to make sensible spending decisions for themselves - so in order to "protect the weak", gambling gets banned (or almost as bad, government "regulated"). This actually TAKES AWAY RIGHTS in order to "protect the weak" - see the difference? Another example is where people point to the sub-prime "failure" and argue that poorer people should be "protected" against taking out loans that they can't afford to service (i.e. against buying things they can't really afford) - you can only "protect" those "weak" people by removing some of everyone's rights, and that's wrong - government is there to protect your rights, not to protect the weak from their own poor decisions.
Another problem is that the notion of "protecting the weak" suggests that government should not focus on protecting the "strong", which is completely incorrect, EVERYONE has the same fundamental rights, whether they are "strong" or "weak" (vague terms, yes, but assuming whatever that means in any given context). The so-called "strong" can and are also often taken advantage of by the so-called "weak" (e.g. a poor person claims a rich celebrity molested their child in order to get a big cash settlement), and if your legal system is focusing on who appears to be "strong" vs. who appears to be "weak" you lose sight of the real issues - individual rights of *everyone*.
In a physical conflict "weak" and "strong" usually refer to physical strength or perhaps weapons advantage; outside of that, people usually take it to refer to "rich" vs "poor". If you think laws should be for "protecting the weak", then it often starts leading to other strange ideas that being poor means you're automatically being taken advantage of by rich people, or that rich people shouldn't have the same 'rights' as poor people because laws should protected the 'poor' from the 'rich'. I know it's popular to hate the rich but it's stupid, and rich people have the same rights as us poor minions. It's a dangerous viewpoint to start thinking otherwise, yet this well-intentioned line of reasoning has led many a country down very bad paths.
Because that would be considered a state responsibility?
Because harassment of any sort can - at least in theory - be successfully prosecuted in the state courts?
The federal government doesn't exercise a police power unless there has been a long history of failure on the local and state level and a national consensus that this cannot be tolerated any longer.
The constitutional theorist may protest - but when a critical mass is reached, things change.
In the 20's and 30's the FBI became deeply engaged in the suppresion of bank robberies, the interstate sex trade, kidnapping for ransom. In the late 60's it began moving in a major way agsinst the KKK.
This hits close to home because of recent events that have gone on at my school in the name of protection from cyber-bullying. One person created a group with the name of another student on Facebook, which constitutes cyber-bullying according to their new rules sent though the state. Even though the person whom the group was about didn't have a Facebook account, the creator of it was expelled, and most members of the group (at least 20) were suspended pending a third party hearing (to see if they get sent to alternative school, or any other punishment). All in the name of cyberbullying several honors students have been suspended (or worse) for clicking an accept button, even though many of these people join groups on reflex, and never participated in the somewhat limited, non harassing conversations of the group. It really makes me angry that the district believes it can control what goes on outside of the school on private property with no carry over into the campus.
Schrödinger's download is slow.
keep your kids in the basement until they are 18. perfectly reasonable interpretation of parental responsibility
you understand 0% of this subject matter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your actions on the Internet are not above the law.
This attitude is the prime reason why the Geek is not widely loved or trusted outside his own community.
You cannot legislate morality. ever. period.
But you can legislate against actions which a larger society defines as immoral and destructive of its own long-term interests.
we have to look at this like the human species is part of the animal kingdom. That old saying 'survival of the fittest' has more meanings than one, and it is the truth whether you think it fair or not. When diseases hit a population, weak and feeble die first. In fact, during any time of stress it is the weak and feeble that die first.
Then as a sentient species we condemn itself to losing a Stephen Hawking - or this thirteen year old girl - for no better reason than our submission to blind chance.
- - - which is all that "survival of the fittest" really means.
You survive because you possess something of value in a singular moment in time and space. The smallpox passes you by because you had the cowpox as a child.
When the Panama Canal was being built it drew common laborers, skilled workers and engineers from across the globe. The young and fit of all races died in enormous numbers. The most dissipated of the locals lived on.
I'm against bullying as much as anyone else, but I think making laws banning cyber-bullying is stupid. If someone is being cyber-bullied they can turn off their computer, to me it's not a big deal.
I think if we should pass any sorta anti-bullying laws, they should be for school bullying, and bullying in the workplace. Cyber-bullying laws will just be abused because you have no proof that someone is a cyber-bully just because they say words you don't like, or lie to you. I think on the internet it's a lot easier to simply block a person out of your life, unlike the workplace or schools, places that you have to be, the internet is a place people choose to be and therefore shouldn't be in the same category.
If someone is bullied in a chatroom they chose to go to, maybe they should stop choosing to go to that chatroom. It's not like cyber bullies are going to follow a user around all over the internet. I see cyber-bullying laws as another one of those victimless crimes. Why should 13 year olds be on the internet unsupervised? It should be illegal to allow unsupervised 13 year olds to access the internet. And under 15, chatsites should be restricted. This would solve the majority of the problems.
The best solution, STOP LETTING CHILDREN ACCESS THE INTERNET UNSUPERVISED. It's both dumb and unethical to do this.
If you criminalize it, and create software to lock the computer up, then this wont be a problem.
Yes, SOME kids will be able to access the internet unsupervised, but the legal liability should be on the parent who allows their CHILD to have UNRESTRICTED internet access. 13 is still a child. Why should we be allowing 13 year olds to go on the internet and chat? These are children we are talking about here.
Why should adults be forced to interact with children on the internet, because parents are too lazy or too busy to protect their kids from the dangers of the internet? If we want an internet for kids, we should design a seperate internet for children, and get rid of all the chatsites, fill it up with educational sites, and bring the
Do we allow 13 year olds to go into bars and nightclubs? Hell no. Why should 13 year olds be in chatrooms? Do we have to get to the point where adults have to password protect websites like slashdot to keep underaged children from reading our discussions complete with swearing and other adult topics? If we are in a situation like that, it's going to destroy the foundation of the internet.
The only solution I see, is to blame parents for any harm caused by the internet, if they were the ones to let their children on the internet unsupervised. I personally did not start chatting on the internet until I was 15. and did not have my own computer until I was 17. I think 15 is a good age to introduce a teenager to the internet unsupervised. 13 clearly is too young, and I think we can all agree on that.
If a child is introduced to the internet by their parents, allowed to use the internet unsupervised, and then they can't handle it and something happens to them, you don't blame the internet, you don't try to pass new laws to destroy the foundation of the internet. In this situation the parents should have been parenting.
It's not OUR job to parent all the children who we might find on the internet. It's not your responsibility, or mine, to be legally liable for children on the internet. It's a parents job to protect their children from the internet PERIOD. Just like it's a parents job to protect their child from violent movies.
I'm tired of parents blaming the video games, the violent movies, the internet, for what their children do. If the technology does not exist for parents to monitor their children 24/7, stop making excuses and develop the technology so parents can know what their children are doing and where they are from their pda smartphone while at work.
Parents should be legally responsible. And I know, the technology currently sucks, but we can and should use all forms of technology to improve parenting. We can and SHOULD put child filters on TV and the internet, but we should also allow for secure encrypted logging of all internet traffic, and to allow a parent to examine the internet traffic in real time from their cellphone at work.
A parent should receive a cellphone alert whenever their child enters a restricted chatroom, or any chatroom for that matter. Children do not have a right to privacy, at all. Parents have the right to give privacy to a responsible child as a gift, or take it away from a child with a history of irresponsibility. And the technology should be designed and developed to make it trivially easy for parents to do this from a distance.
And as I see it, there is no excuse. And no, I'm not talking about 15 years and up, these kids are old enough to buy their own computer or figure out how to get around whatever the parents do. But 13 year olds? 13 year either shouldn't be online chatting at all, or should be monitored.
The parent knew the psychological state of their child. They'd at least have seen hints that their child was capable of suicide, and was unstable.
If a child psychologically unstable, you have to protect SOCIETY from the reckless behaviors of the child. You cannot tell people who aren't suicidal that they have to behave a certain way.
Lots of people on the internet and off the internet have psychological problems, and they should seek help, and if parents know about these psychological problems, they should have understood that someone on the internet could upset their child or cause all sorts of trauma.
But we should not try to police the entire internet just because some people on the internet are suicidal. There are suicidal cults and suicide websites all over the internet which promote and even describe how to commit suicide. Are these sites cyber-bullying people? Should these sites be banned?
Many people commit group suicide in Japan. Should the websites where these people meet up be banned? Are the people who discuss topics such as suicide cyber-bullies? is this a form of cyber-bullying? I'm sorry, but it's not my responsibility to concern myself with what children who aren't mine, are doing on the internet anymore than I should be concerned about what suicidal people want to do. I might advise them not to harm themselves, but it's truly not my problem legally, or ethically. These are not our kids, so stop trying to distribute your parenting responsibility onto the rest of us.
Sure, we will help you develop the technology to police your own kids, and we'll profit when we sell it to you, but it's your responsibility to buy and use it, and the child is your legal responsibility. And if your child runs away from home, and lives with a stranger, it's not kidnapping, and the stranger should not be charged with kidnapping.
Why can't parents watch their child 24/7?
We put cameras above babies cribs, these cameras can transmit data through the internet and beam it into your cellphone, now you can see your baby 24/7. Your child goes to school, you can buy sneakers for your child with RFID in it. Now you know where your child is 24/7. Your child is a teenager, you can give your child a cellphone with RFID and GPS in it, now you know where your child is 24/7.
The technology exists to watch your kids 24/7. The problem is, there are time constraints, and it probably makes more sense to pay other people to watch your kids 24/7, but if parents are willing to pay for community policing, and for the parenting technology, I see no reason why we cannot have technological control over our children.
Maybe the congress should be listening to people like you and funding parental technologies instead of this censorship filtering bullshit.
We SHOULD be spying on our children. Thats a parents job. Children do not have civil rights, they do not have a right to privacy.
You cannot compare the government to your parent, your parent loves you, and you've known the parent your entire life. The government sees you as a social security number.
Parents should spy on their children. There, someone had to say it so I said it.
IF someone commits suicide, even if they left a suicide note saying your words killed them, it's THEIR fault.
Why are there victimless crimes if civil society cares about protecting the weak and ending violence? A lot of laws exist merely to create victims.
The purpose of such a finding is, after all, to take private vengeance and mob violence out of the picture. No violence was commited. There can be no forgiveness for misconduct where there are no consequences for misconduct. We should punish so other can forgive?
Uhh. When are we supposed to get "less government" out of the Republicans? Seems to me it just keeps getting bigger, bigger, and more expensive (and more intrusive).
Bill B.
Why is this even an issue? It's absurd to try and legislate people teasing each other. Think of how many of us would be felons for things we said about Steve Jobs or Ballmer.
Seriously, though, if someone can't handle a very typical teenage prank (whether it was perpetrated by an actual teen is immaterial, it happens all the time) and kills themself... well then, that's just evolution, isn't it?
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
That's an easy idea in retrospect, but growing up did you ever bug your parents over and over about something until they decided to let you do it?
No, because if my parents said 'no', they said so for a reason and they meant 'no'.
Perhaps parents should stop giving in to the whining and show some backbone once in a while. Just a thought.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
There has been alot of talk that the only one to blame is Megan herself for taking her life, her parent's should have gotten her help since she was obviously unstable, etc, etc, etc. What many are missing is the fact that not only were her parent's getting her help, but the woman who perpetrated the hoax knew exactly what state Megan was in. Megan had vacationed with them while still friends with the Drew girl. Lori Drew knew exactly what state Megan was in and used it to her advantage.
There is also the fact that not only did Lori pretend to be a 16y/o boy, but by her own admission let things travel into sexual areas. In her own statement when she tried laying charges for the destruction of a foose ball table by Megan's family it is stated:
Drew went on to say, the communication became "sexual for a thirteen year old." Drew stated she continued the fake male profile despite this development. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1120072megan1.html Here is the full report.
That is a totally sick development and frankly falls in line with online luring. If a 30 year old guy had pretended to be 16, even for the same reasons Lori Drew did, he would have been slammed hard.
Not only did she take advantage of a known condition, did it in some of the most disgusting manner, but she also feels no remorse for what her actions caused. Also from the report she filed: Drew felt this incident contributed to Megan's suicide, but she did not feel "as guilty" because at the funeral because she found out "Megan had tried to commit suicide before."
Now like most of the frequenters of
I do not believe that this case warrants stronger anti-bullying laws, but I do believe the FBI, the local police and anyone else that believes no charges are possible should pull their heads out of their collective asses. Would not a simple charge of criminal negligence causing death fit?
Plain and simple, the woman is a cunt (a word I never use) and public shunning should just be the beginning (meaning serious legal consequences, not vigilantiism).
Void for vagueness is all I want to hear about this law in a few months. How can you prove what someone REALLY feels
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
A psychologically unstable (medicated!) young teenage girl should not be allowed on the Internet, period. The fact that her "suitor" was not real has no bearing on the fact that an interaction with a random personality on the Internet affected her enough to cause her to commit suicide. This person should not have been allowed unsupervised contact with ANYONE. This is completely the parents responsibility. The other parents seem to be children in grown persons' bodies but that isn't really the point.
This looks like the old "there aughta be a law" meme again. There are some things that ARE morally or ethically wrong that are nevertheless difficult or impossible to codify into law without banning many things that are not wrong. Recent history has shown that we cannot count on discretion amongst police and prosecutors to screen out the cases that are not wrong. There are too many DAs who would seek the death penelty for jay walking if they could to prove that they're "tough on crime".
Considering that this is a case of a supposed adult carrying on against a young teen as if they were classmates in a rivalry, surely something can be done without invoking a new law. For one, I would think that a wrongful death suit dragging all of the lurid details into the open would ruin this woman socially and perhaps professionally. Most adults with diagnosable personality disorders still have enough maturity to confine their bullying to other adults. Surely, a potential employer or social contact would wonder if this woman should be in a nice safe mental ward rather than out on the streets.
Likewise, her fitness as a parent is naturally called into question. Mental adulthood is a pre-requisite to parenting. We know she has provided her daughter with at least one phenominally bad example of how an adult should behave.
http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills081/bills/hb1505.htm http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills081/biltxt/intro/HB1505I.htm What's interesting is this thing isn't limited to emails... or the web for that matter... 565.090. 1. A person commits the crime of harassment if for the purpose of frightening or disturbing another person, he (1) Communicates in writing or by telephone a threat to commit any felony; or (2) Makes a telephone call or communicates in writing and uses coarse language offensive to one of average sensibility; or (3) Makes a telephone call anonymously; or (4) Makes repeated telephone calls. === (3) "Electronic communications", the origination, emission, dissemination, transmission, or reception of data, images, signals, sounds, or other intelligence or equivalence of intelligence of any nature over any communications system by any method, including, but not limited to, a fiber optic, electronic, magnetic, optical, digital, or analog method. Such electronic communications shall include, but not be limited to electronic mail, Internet-based communications, pager service, and electronic text messaging; (4) "Electronic communications device", any instrument, equipment, machine, or other device that facilitates telecommunication, including, but not limited to, a computer, computer network, computer chip, computer circuit, scanner, telephone, cellular telephone, pager, personal communications device, transponder, receiver, radio, modem, or device that enables the use of a modem. So... written stuff and scanned and faxes as well as phone calls apply... In theory, this law could be applied to any "scary" advertisement on TV!
Remember all those "to catch a preditor" shows? The preditors could countersue under this law, and claim the guys that nabbed them, whether police or otherwise, were harrassing... something to think about.