The mother of that 13 year old girl who killed herself after some people on Myspace posing as a 16 year old boyfriend harrassed her, is pushing to get internet harrassment outlawed. But I question, if this passes, what all is going to be perceived as harrassment? Is everybody who decides to be a smart aleck and virtually mouth off going to be arrested?

I mean I can understand she's upset, her 13 year old killed herself after the neighbors wrote her saying the world would be better off without her...but first of all, you can't make someone kill themself...especially not like that. The insults they used on that girl are no different than the same ones I've been having hurled at me for several years online, I'm still here. Furthermore, if I had a quarter for every time somebody told me (like the neighbors told her) that I was fat, a [censored], and the world would be better off without me, I'd be rich even after taxes, I'm still here.

Another reason I don't think this mother has much ground to argue on is because her daughter had been depressed and suicidal since she was 8 years old, and yet her mother let her get a Myspace account at 13 and talk to people she didn't know, and who probably like a lot of people online, enjoy saying whatever they want to make others look bad. I mean, if you have a mentally disturbed child who gets upset over what people say, WHY would you even allow them to get into something like that?

Now, there's a world of difference between someone online making threats against a person, and someone just being rude and saying whatever they want about another person...I don't think it should be outlawed because then everytime somebody mouths off about somebody else online, they're all going to be taken in to the police station. What's everybody else think?

Well I agree with what you say. Those of us who are not paranoid, or otherwise disturbed, would ignore such insults and delete them. We would stay away from the particular site, and remove our account. Parents have a lot to answer for if they do not oversee what their child is watching on TV or getting into on the net.

Amen to that...I mean the internet can be, and often is a very scary and very dangerous place...anybody not living under a rock or in Amish civilizations, knows that...so just what does this mother think, what did she think, that nobody would say anything hurtful to her daughter for some reason or other? I don't know what's wrong with everybody but I hope her push for outlawing internet harrassment is denied, because once you set a law on something that people do, it's always a guessing game from there on out if it really happened, and if it was serious enough that it called for somebody to be arrested.

Totally agree with that Ren!

The bottom line here is, if you don't like what you are reading - DON'T READ IT!
Secondly - learn how to close a browser - it's wonderful, with a click of the mouse, all the nasty people go away .........

In reply to Cadets post - internet harassment IS already illegal, but you are quite right to question the actual definition of harassment.

The internet is a wonderful invention - but at the same time it is also an EXTREMELY dangerous place for those without the intelligence or knowledge to take adequate precautions.

Without going into specifics, some of the posts even on THIS website, often make my eyebrows rise. Some members in my opinion give away far too much personal and private information - one has to be vigilant at all times - do NOT take everyone at face value, many people on the internet are NOT who they say they are!

That's for sure...I don't think a lot of people realize what they can get into when they go online, I've seen people give our their addresses, their phone numbers, just about everything...what in the world are they thinking?

Whatevery happened to

"Sticks and Stones may break my bones,
but Names will never hurt me"?

You can't blame MySpace for an already upset and disturbed person killing themselves. While I don't have a MySpace page (proud admission), I have visited the site. Quite frankly - I thought I saw some idiots in my line of work, but they are nothing compared to some of the jokers on MySpace, or some of the other sites like YouTube and FaceBook.

As previously pointed out, if the mother had been caring for her 13 year old in a responsible manner, ie, supervising her child, getting her assistance for her depression, subscribing to a site designed to help rather than letting her loose on FaceBook, the poor girl might have stood a better chance.

Harassment is illegal, however, I agree with the other posters - click the little 'x' button on the top right of the screen. Like Magic it all goes away.

The upsetting part to the parents of the girl who committed suicide is not as much to the point of she was bullied on MySpace. But that a neighbor's employee in conjunction with the neighbor and her daughter created a false identity. Then for 6 weeks was in contact with the girl under this false persona gaining her confidence and building a supposed relationship with the girl. Then out of the blue started the vulgar posting, breaking off the type of contact they had.

The length of time this set up went on and the absolute malice shown by the employee and neighbors, to knowingfully mess with the young girls emotions, first with the false name building a closeness then slamming here for no reason the girl could understand. That is certainly cruel and methodical actions.

If it had just been the vulgar posts I don't think the result would have been the same.

Myspace is probably not to blame, but the employee and neighbor certainly hold some accountability, though they will never be brought to justice.

I believe is should be. Being bullied and harassed is enough pain and trouble without the added burden of having it all over the internet. At least outside of the computer, if you've had enough, you can smack the person. Hard to do online and when you can't be sure who is harassing you. There are laws to prevent harassment, it shouldn't be that hard to add an internet one.

The post regarding the alleged content of a blog has been removed - we do not wish this site to have possible legal problems.

Thank you.

For advice and information on staying safe on the internet - checkout this police sponsored website

http://virtualglobaltaskforce.com

On myspace one doesn't HAVE to open and read every letter received. If I see it's from someone I don't want to hear from (hasn't happened yet, I've been there a couple of years) I can delete it unread, like junk e mail. We need to teach our kids to use a bit of common sense with these things or not go there at all.

As far as I know, harassment on the internet can be prosecuted under already existing harassment laws. Like fraud and threats, it doesn't matter where it happens, in real life or online, it's still illegal and legal action can be taken if the authorities find fault.

It's very easy to say things like close the browser, don't read things... it's what I would do, of course. But where children are concerned, we can't rightly expect them to have the same sort of sense. We can try to tell our children to just not read emails from people who don't like them. That seems sensible from the standpoint of teaching your kids that not everyone will like them and they have to deal with the real world. It also seems sensible for a parent to always take it seriously and listen to their children's problems if there is ANY harassment going on ANYwhere, in school, online, etc., and NEVER pass over it with "just don't read it." There are SO many fine lines a parent has to tread.

And internet safety is a tough thing too. My daughter is five, and she loves to visit the websites of her favorite characters, like Thomas the Tank Engine and Winnie the Pooh. For Christmas we got her an EasyLink so she can visit certain child-safe websites with a STRICT set of parental controls (including a built in adjustable time limit!). It makes me feel MUCH better. I, on the other hand, am admittedly lax. I have several online businesses and participate in craft swaps and all sorts of other things. My likes and dislikes, home town, full name and photo are readily available to almost anyone. I take a calculated risk based on my extensive personal knowledge. But then, I'm certainly old enough to do so.

I think what it comes down to is, I don't believe we need ANY laws that specifically deal with internet harassment. The same laws must apply to someone's behavior in the school yard as on MySpace, and that is as it should be. If anything should be improved, it's parents' awareness, and unfortunately that can't be legislated.

If you know the person and can prove they were indeed the one doing the harrasing you could have a case. But how do you prosecute when it is someone in cyberspace. Its tough to figure out where they are from none the less prove they were the ones posting. I would love it if there were a way of stoping harrassment but unless it is someone you actually know I would think it would be tough.

A side note on the OP. I am not as familiar with the story. Did the parents have no idea this was going on? It seems a little parental intersetion might have saved the girls life. I am not particularly paranoid or over protective of my children in general but internet use will be monitored very closely when they get older.

Anytime you log on to a website (including this one) the administrators of that site will have access to the IP address from which you have connected. The problem is that many connections nowadays are from dynamic IP addresses. What that means is, every time you connect to your provider you are allocated a different IP from a block of IP addresses. However, your internet provider will have a log of every IP address they have allocated to you at any given time - so yes, through the providers, anyone can be traced.

Saw a TV show about this the other day, the very case in question, as a matter of fact. I'm not sure how the laws (or lack of them) land in terms of location over here but, according to the parents of the deceased girl, there is no legal action the authorities can take against the other teenager's mother (the one who pretended to be a boy and "flirted" with the girl who suicided). The parents can conduct a civil suit, and will likely do that, but (call me skeptical about everything that either side was saying, in specific and/or mostly general terms) their claim is "that this is not about money". I would conclude, after watching them and hearing the entire boundaries of the story and all that led up to the grisly conclusion of it, that these parents on either side are not poster people for "principles" (or maturity, forethought and/or any sort of healthy awareness before the facts ended in a hearse --- but that's just my personal opinion ). BUT, it seems, MySpace can bring charges? So they say (and a company rep was there with a law enforcement dude to concur, on the show). They are claiming that they can charge the woman who "created" the bogus MySpace account with defrauding them . "Creating" a screen persona that was fictional, and doing it on purpose? Um - maybe I'm wrong here - but if that ends up a crime from here to everywhere, there's whole bunches of people in whole bunches of trouble. Anyway, though, I found it very odd that the cops seem to have no REAL crime with which to go after the surviving teen's parents with. MySpace, though (a true bastion of all that is right, purposeful and socially important ~ yeah, right ) can 'get' them delivered a warrant for "fraud" ? Ahem. Given the slipperiness of that slope, can you just imagine the numbers of peculiar arrests for this, that and the other thing that could happen? Especially in the area of interpersonal matters as they happen on the Internet. Very unsettling. And endless, too, I think.

But, as we seem to know (but the parents involved in this case didn't stay on top of knowing, or so it seems): it takes a very very long time to put spilled milk back into the bottle. In fact, try as try can be, that bottle of milk is NEVER returned to the wholeness that was there before someone had the poor judgement or bad luck to spill it. But, at the end of a 'sensible' day, it serves no real purpose to blame the milk. Or the cow. Etcetera.

To portray oneself as anything other than oneself, is known as "impostering", and is a criminal offence. It seems that in this case it is the only offence that could be levied.
If you take this law to the extreme, it would actually be illegal to portray oneself as being single, when actually married - or even to portray oneself as being a parent, when actually childless.
I suppose if you take it to ridiculous extremes, it would be illegal for a plain, dowdy, ugly woman, to portray herself as glamorous and attractive!