Legal Issues

The internet as a medium of communication has revolutionized the whole concept of communication in the sense that all sorts of speeches are easily disseminated to the intended individual whether it is meant for good or for bad. All categories of internet users including the racists, hate mongers, cyber bullies and terrorists have utilized the internet as a communication hub to execute their heinous crimes. These groups of individuals have used the internet to harass and plan despicable crimes to the innocent law abiding citizens. The First Amendment of the American constitution has provided for the freedoms regarding speech and expression under which communication has been covered. The challenges that have been brought about by the advent of the internet have made the need for a legal framework that could deal with the emergent issues. This area becomes very sensitive as censorship of specific internet information closely borders on the infringement of the crucial First Amendment as provided for in the Bill of Rights (Hardwick, 2010).

The First Amendment
The First Amendment to the US constitution was contained in the Bill of Rights and prohibits the Congress against the passing of any law that could abridge the freedom of speech and expression. The concept of speech has been given broad interpretation by the courts to include both verbal and nonverbal communication. There is a common saying that there is no law without exceptions and the First Amendment has included exceptions of free speech as including obscenity, defamation, breach of peace, incitement to criminal activities, fighting words, and sedition. However, the courts may at times justify these exceptions as speech that is capable of causing a considerable harm to the general public. Under the harm principle, it is argued that the only way the government can rightfully exercise power in any given civilized society is by preventing foreseeable harm to others (Van Camp, 2005). The inadequacy in the First Amendment can be observed since it has loopholes that allows for the protection of what can be considered as offensive, repugnant, and hateful expressions.

Cyber-bullying
Cyber-bullying is an online safety concern that has gotten much attention in the recent past. The proliferation of communications due to the advancement in the technology has been on the rise. The advent of the internet has resulted into increased interconnectivity between individuals making social interactions and activities on social sites like the Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, You Tube, Webkinz, among others gain instant popularity. Even though the increased connectivity has its advantages, the advancement in electronic media has given rise to a social problem that is referred to as cyber-bullying. This is a problem that is mostly associated with children, adolescents, and young adults. Cyber-bullying is a wider concept that includes an action that is aimed at coercing, intimidating, harassing, or causing emotional distress to an individual. Cyber-bullying has been defined as being cruel to others by sending or posting harmful material or engaging in other forms of social cruelty using the internet or other digital technologies (Szoka  Thierer, 2009 Para 7). The technology of today is characterized with free exchanges in text messages, instant messages, blogs, and website comments. Cyber-bullying is all about direct and covert negative social expressions that are conveyed electronically via the internet, cellular phones, and other various forms of digital technologies. There are two forms of cyber-bullying that have emerged which includes peer against peer and anti-authority. In peer against peer, schoolmates and generally young people are involved in the ridiculing and harassment of their age groups via the electronic media. On the other hand, anti-authority cyber-bullying involves the educators and other authority figures being targeted by the bullies who are out to harm their reputation (Shariff, 2009).
There is profound evidence that cyber-bullying is on the increase and that it has devastating repercussions especially for children. The effects of cyber-bullying are great to the victim and may even result in suicide cases. Victims of cyber-bullying are oftenly depressed, and lack self esteem due to the demoralization and character assassination directed towards them. The victims would experience direct emotional distress and this impact on the concentration of the victims since they are preoccupied by the concern of their security. The victims may experience increasing fear and may be tempted to take their lives. The case involving Megan Meier is just an illustration of how cyber-bullying can turn tragic. Megan was a thirteen year old who was bullied on MySpace and was devastated that she resorted to committing suicide. Prior to her death, Megan had received humiliating messages from her bully and considering that the girl had a fragile and difficult background, she committed suicide (Szoka  Thierer, 2009).

Legal and policy vacuum
Cyber-bulling has presented a great challenge to the authorities when presented with the task of controlling and relating the internet use. It is very difficult to monitor cyber-bullying among school going children since it occurs on personal computers and mobile phones when they are out of school environments. The bullies usually have a false sense of security using screen names to enhance anonymity but nevertheless accomplishing their mission of frightening their targets. There is a general lack of knowledge about the roles of stakeholders including the technology corporations, teachers, and news media have to play as policy shapers and their legal responsibilities in proactively handling cyber-bullying. There are two federal approaches that have been employed in an effort to deal with cyber-bullying. The first one is based on the creation of a new federal felony in order to be able to punish cyber-bullies with the imposition of fines and jail sentences to the violators. The other model involves creating awareness about the safety of the internet through education in order to address the issue in the schools and the community. Criminalization of what is mostly child to child behavior will have its challenges in providing solution to childhood mistreatments by fellow children. This issue on children has traditionally been dealt with through counseling and rehabilitation at the home setting. Nevertheless, criminalizing will raise thorny issues regarding the freedom of speech and the issues related to the legal definitions given to harassing and intimidating speech. On the contrary, education and awareness stand a chance of reducing the harmful behaviors in children and avoid the constitutional pitfalls (Szoka  Thierer, 2009).

The First Amendment and Cyber-bullying
Cyber-bullying has been described as the most venal and unbearable abuse of the provisions of the First Amendment. Due to technological advancement, cyber-bullying has continued to evade sanctions that are meant to protect individuals from the traditional abuses like stalking and threats. Online expressions can be permanently saved on personal computers and linked on the internet search list. They can also be forwarded to as many recipients as possible. There are loopholes in the First Amendment that have been abused by the cyber-bullies as seen in the several Supreme Court rulings. The court in Reno Vs ACLU (1997) established that the internet is entitled to the highest level of First Amendment protection, just like the print media. This means that online hate speech could be viewed in the same line as a hate speech pamphlet that is distributed by the outlawed political organizations like the KKK (Hudson Jr, 2009).

The law holds that, unless the hate speech crosses the line into provocation to imminent anarchy or threats perceived to be true, then the speech will have to enjoy the protection of the First Amendment. Most online speeches rarely cross into the unprotected categories of incitement and imminent lawlessness since most will not meet the imminence that is required. A hate message on the website may lead to an unlawful action at some undesignated time in the future and therefore may enjoy the protection of the law. Based on this criterion, some legal experts have argued that new standards are needed in order to fully address hatred speech on the internet. It is obvious that some online speech may fall under the unprotected true threats in the First amendment. However, in Virginia Vs Black case, true threats were defined as statements where the speaker intended to communicate a serious expression of intent to commit a criminal act of violence to either an individual or a group. Therefore, for online speech to qualify to be true threats, then it has to meet the demands of the definition provided above (Hudson Jr, 2009).

Any efforts aimed at the regulation of the internet are faced by the First Amendment huddle under which a considerable portion of the cyber-bullying activities are protected. Though some of the cyber-bullying activities are so grave that they cannot be protected by the First Amendment, still serious questions remain about how best to deal with cyber-bullying. The Supreme Court has recognized threats and has established in the Watts case that threats are punishable in congruence with the First Amendment. It should be noted that the Congress had already recognized and adopted a law that criminalizes electronic threats. Cyber-bullying continues to enjoy protection from the fighting words criterion since the latter can only happen during face to face communication. On issues of libel and slander, the Supreme Court usually crafts criminal sanctions regarding defamatory statements. With the intentional infliction of emotional distress, the Supreme Court has recognized that cyber-bullying activities befit this criterion only when the act is deemed intentional. However, controversies have continued to emerge given the rulings that are at times made by the Supreme Court. For instance, the ruling in a case where Reverend Jerry Falwell sued the publisher of the Hustler Magazine surprised many First Amendment observers.  The Falwell vs. Hustler case casts doubts about the theory of intentional infliction of harm when dealing with cyber-bullying (ONeil, 2009).

Legislature and Cyber-bullying
Social networking on the internet has been a major concern to the authorities and the stakeholders due to the fear of predatory activities of the cyber-bullies. This has elicited various legislative responses with lawmakers coming up with different legislations aimed at containing the menace. States have been engaged in the pushing for age verification, mandates that will enable them to exclude certain age brackets from accessing social network cites. Recently, some state law makers have been of the view that parental consent requirements be expanded based on the framework established by the Federal Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. Even though none of these has been put in practice, these proposals have continued to be floated (Szoka  Thierer, 2009).

Following Megan Meiers incident, in May of 2008, a bill that would create a new federal felony was introduced in the house. The bill famously known as the Megan Meier Cyber-bullying Prevention Act was introduced by Rep. Linda Sanchez. In the defense of her bill, she argued that cyber-bullying offense is one area that has avoided penalty for long. She emphasized the need to act upon bullies who are taking advantage of the provisions of the First Amendment to cause harm on children. The bill failed and Sanchez planned for its reintroduction in 2009 as the HB 1966 Act. This second attempt was equally rejected by the public which was indicated by the critical reaction leveled against the bill. The revelation section of the bill involves the definition of cyber-bullying as any transmissions in interstates or foreign commerce of any communication, with the intent too coerce, intimidate, harass, cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, (Cox, 2009 Para 8). In the bill, communication has been defined as the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the users choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent or received (Cox, 2009 Para 12). The bill has been seen as raising the First Amendment concerns which happen to be a great issue to most Americans. Other critics have alleged that the bill would have been faced with constitutional vagueness if enacted and therefore challenged by the First Amendment. In the bill, communication has been defined as the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the users choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent or received, (Cox, 2009).

Some individuals have argued that criminalizing the cyber-bullying is not necessary and that all the cyber-bullying activities can be handled by parents, educators, and the general community. They continue to argue that when the cyber-bullying rises to the level where criminal intervention is necessary, already there are laws in place to deal with the situation. This includes laws in regard to stalking, criminal harassment, felonious assault, among other provisions. As much as I would want to agree with this argument, the government has to recognize the deficiency of our legislature in dealing with the technological expansion that we are experiencing. Technology is always a step ahead of the legislature and it is therefore the duty of legislature to catch up. Nevertheless, parents have the duty to teach their kids on the morals of being good cyber-citizens by monitoring which kind of websites the children browses and generally monitoring the internet activities of their children. Most cyber-bully participants have been found to be having many social issues and this would not require legislation to curb but instead, good parentage is needed.