what do you think about cyberbullying rules?

[karyn]

from kansas city ap

Missouri prosecutors using cyberbullying law
By BETSY TAYLOR
The Associated Press
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ST. LOUIS | Missouri prosecutors are bringing charges under a revised harassment law spurred by the suicide of a 13-year-old girl following cruel messages on the Internet.

The 2006 death of Megan Meier of St. Charles County prompted Missouri lawmakers to update state harassment law earlier this year so that it now covers bullying and stalking done through electronic media, like e-mails or text messages.

A handful of cases related to electronic communication have been filed statewide since the law took effect Aug. 28. Prosecutors do not track harassment cases based on the type of communication method used, so could not provide an exact count in recent days of how many people have been charged because of the new provisions.

In one of the new cases, 21-year-old Nicole Williams is accused of harassing a 17-year-old girl in a dispute over a boy using electronic communication. Williams is scheduled for arraignment on one count of harassment on Jan. 8.

She allegedly sent a vulgar text message to the cell phone of a 17-year-old she had not previously met because she heard the girl had a physical encounter with her boyfriend. The two had just been talking, police said.

The 17-year-old girl received voice messages with lewd and threatening comments, including some that called her by the name "pork and beans" and threatened ****. Williams told police others sent those messages from her phone, according to a probable cause statement.

St. Peters police spokeswoman Melissa Doss said Friday that the 17-year-old had eggs, thumbtacks and a can of baked beans thrown on her car. Williams has not been linked with or charged with those offenses, she noted.

The case was filed in November and is the first involving text messages in St. Charles County, the county where Meier resided, since the new law went into effect.

Defense attorney Michael Kielty, who represents Williams, was critical of the revised law on electronic harassment. He called the Meier case tragic, but said lawmakers had engaged in a knee-jerk reaction to try to address the high-profile case.

In a landmark cyber-bullying trial, Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Mo., was convicted in Los Angeles on misdemeanor federal charges of accessing computers without authorization last month.

Prosecutors said Drew and two others created a fictitious teenage boy on ******* and sent flirtatious messages from him to neighbor Megan Meier, 13. The "boy" dumped Megan in 2006, telling her: "The world would be a better place without you." Megan hanged herself. Drew has not yet been sentenced.

The trial in California came after Missouri prosecutors said they couldn't find state statutes that allowed them to file charges.

Kielty said Missouri's revised harassment measures are bad law. "It's probably one of the worst written laws I've seen in my career," he said.

He said kids used to say things face to face or pass notes in school commenting on someone's looks or weight. The new law "criminalizes behavior that otherwise wouldn't be illegal except for the medium," he said.

"It's not criminal. It might be mean-spirited, but it's not criminal," he said.

St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas noted the allegations against Williams haven't been proven yet, but said the updated harassment law should help make it "easier to go after people who are going after people in unusual ways."

He said harassment over the telephone has been a crime for years in Missouri. The changes to the law broadens it to cover new technology," he said.

Banas said he's still not sure Missouri's current harassment law as it related to electronic communication would have allowed for prosecution of Drew, had it been in effect at the time of Megan's death. He thinks it would have been difficult to prove the case because of a lack of corroborating evidence. "The communications weren't sent by Mrs. Drew, for one thing," he said. Drew wasn't charged with harassment in the California case.

About 45 states have updated their laws to address harassment through electronic communications or crafted new laws to respond to the concerns of cyberbullying or cyberstalking, said Naomi Goodno, an associate professor at Pepperdine University School of Law who has written about cyberbullying law. She said many of those changes happened prior to the Meier case or were fueled by other concerns.

State Sen. Scott Rupp, R-Wentzville, who sponsored the bill to change Missouri harassment law, said Missouri's law hasn't been fully tested, but he believes it is making people more aware of what they say online.

Online bloggers have written about Missouri's new law, or sent out links to it as a reference when derogatory comments were made onthe Internet, he said. "That people are actually paying attention — it is a good thing," he said.

[Velvet-Tongue]

God what pussies.

[Buster Friendly]

All I can really say to all of that is...

O RLY?

[Bacchus88]

wow....what the hell is world coming to....

has any every told kids today it better to face your bullies.. it will only cause more problem down the road.

[Ajax Knucklebones]

I think we'd all be fucked if this became a national law.

[Mr Karl]

oh well.......bad parenting

[Vexbeast]

Clearly someone needs to be told the internet is serious business. >.>

[Vix]

Is this a joke? O for gods sake is nothin is these days. lets throw stones and all break bones and sue everyone after

[Amelia G]

I think this is actually a pretty complex issue.

A grown woman drove a child to suicide with her duplicitous cyberbullying.

This is not to say that society should overcompensate for that by jailing someone for telling a skank to stay away from her man on a cell phone, instead of in person. That's just dumb.

[Morning Glory]

This isn't about the case where the girl committed suicide.

I agree with the attorney who said, "The new law "criminalizes behavior that otherwise wouldn't be illegal except for the medium," he said.

"It's not criminal. It might be mean-spirited, but it's not criminal," he said."

it's not against the law to be an asshole. that's free speech. love it or leave it. Now you can take appropriate legal actions against harassment, against threats, and for various other charges that might occur over the internet like misrepresentation or libel, etc.

There's already laws to protect against people being harmful in their speech, there is no need to create a new one, especially one that is really ambiguous and can apply to just about any time that someone doesn't like what they hear.

[Vexbeast]

It sounds like it would be used just to damn those who chanced on a particularly fragile target.

If someone can be so traumatized by the internet, they need counseling. Pursuing legal action against their friends or guardians for not getting them into counseling makes more sense to me than this.

And yes, I acknowledge that makes no sense at all. Nuff said.

[Morning Glory]

fuck you vex!

oh noos, here come the cops!

my lawyers have advised me that pleading sarcasm won't help in my defense.

[LeilaHazlett]

There's already laws to protect against people being harmful in their speech, there is no need to create a new one, especially one that is really ambiguous and can apply to just about any time that someone doesn't like what they hear.

Yeah, I'm not sure why saying something mean over the internet is any different that saying mean shit in person. If someone is harassing you and making threats it's one thing, but just saying something insulting shouldn't be a crime.

And as far as the girl who committed suicide goes, no one commits suicide over one incident, she must have been unstable to begin with.

[Jax]

If anyone cared to do research, the girl who committed suicide didnt do it over one incident.

What that woman did to that teen was just disgusting. Weather that girl was unstable or not.

[Cafe_Post_Mortem]

I haven't seen the law, so I may be off base here.

There is a difference between saying something mean and harassment. A person is not allowed (in most states) to call me every day and yell obscenities into my phone, that is harassment. What the law allegedly does is it adds otehr forms of electronic communication.

In the case in question, several calls and texts were sent including threats of ****. According to the prosecution, the majority of these came from one phone. A 21 year old is (allegedly) leaving lewd and threatening comments on a seventeen year old's phone. That is harassment in any other medium. Unless I completely misunderstood the article, it is not like the cops will kick in my door if I call someone a pig fucker on the internet. If I send them emails every day calling them a pig fucker, then they might.

[grebo]

a grown woman bullying a kid to suicide is fucked but have these people never heard of the delete button?