1st August 2008, 9:51 PM
Good article. Some of the stuff out there can get really creepy, you really have to watch out for yourself. The internet is a great sociological experiment; some of the evil things that sociopathic people do balance out every great thing about the internet: a wealth of information, networking, entertainment, porn... On the other hand, it's absolutely insane in cases like Lori Drew and what she went through to drive Megan Meier to the point of suicide. This isn't just some dumb kid or manchild hooting and snorting while they totally pwn someone in a dumb debate, this is a grown woman harassing a poor insecure teenage girl to the point of taking her own life.
I don't think the internet should be regulated too heavily, though. Censorship aside, the problem with harassment laws and "emotional damage" is that it's hard to gauge how much warrants what punishment. People already go crazy with that in punitive damages in civil courts. I think a system where people can submit complaints that lead to violators getting temporarily blacklisted from ISPs and other public access points (like libraries or college campuses, though you'd run into some trouble with WiFi) along with fines might be a good step, but again, it's hard to draw exact lines. Forcing domain holders or ISPs to submit evidence for such a thing could be a violation of privacy. Then again, if it's public, submitting a complaint could mean could be set up so that a version of whatever webpage in question is automatically downloaded to a server for evidence. Private websites would need a temporary key made to access user-private features like PMs.
None of this gets into evidence of emotional damage, of course. I doubt Meier would have had enough time to get, say, evaluated psychiatrically before she reached the breaking point. Legislation like this wouldn't have saved her, but there would still at least be punishment for the responsible parties. It also doesn't address what happens if someone isn't harrassed directly. Let's say that a particular myspace or youtube video or blog or website is brought up in a web forum for people to laugh at it and make fun of it. They're taking something public and sending opinions about it over the lines. Is that harassment?
I don't think the internet should be regulated too heavily, though. Censorship aside, the problem with harassment laws and "emotional damage" is that it's hard to gauge how much warrants what punishment. People already go crazy with that in punitive damages in civil courts. I think a system where people can submit complaints that lead to violators getting temporarily blacklisted from ISPs and other public access points (like libraries or college campuses, though you'd run into some trouble with WiFi) along with fines might be a good step, but again, it's hard to draw exact lines. Forcing domain holders or ISPs to submit evidence for such a thing could be a violation of privacy. Then again, if it's public, submitting a complaint could mean could be set up so that a version of whatever webpage in question is automatically downloaded to a server for evidence. Private websites would need a temporary key made to access user-private features like PMs.
None of this gets into evidence of emotional damage, of course. I doubt Meier would have had enough time to get, say, evaluated psychiatrically before she reached the breaking point. Legislation like this wouldn't have saved her, but there would still at least be punishment for the responsible parties. It also doesn't address what happens if someone isn't harrassed directly. Let's say that a particular myspace or youtube video or blog or website is brought up in a web forum for people to laugh at it and make fun of it. They're taking something public and sending opinions about it over the lines. Is that harassment?