Orange County Computer Lawyer Blog

Cyberbullying Difficult to Regulate

Lawmakers contemplating new regulations regarding cyberbullying face a nearly impossible task.  Their actions come as a response to the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier.  Megan alledgedly received cruel message from her neighbors from a fake MySpace account.  Her parents claim these messages caused her to hang herself in 2006.  Now two cities near her home have passed local ordinances making Internet harassment a crime.  Several other cities and counties are looking to follow with their own Internet harassment laws.

These laws are doomed to failure.  A global medium, much as the Internet, simply cannot be regulated at the local level.  Harassment may not come from one’s neighbors, but from someone in another state or another country.  Local cities would have no jurisdiction over most cyberbullies.  Then there is the problem of free speech.  While harassment may be clear in extreme cases, in many cases it would be difficult to draw the line between free speech and harassment.  It gets even more difficult when these regulations are on the local level.  What is legal on one side of the street may be illegal on the other side of the street in an adjacent city?  What if the messages are composed on a laptop or cellphone while in different jurisdictions?  The law may change depending upon where one is standing?

Lawmakers simply need to take a step back and analyze the problem before passing unenforceable computer laws.  It is difficult for the law to keep up with rapidly changing technology.  There is no need for lawmakers to make matters worse with knee-jerk laws.