With the increase of crimes linked to cyberbullies there has been a growing number of cases of rape and murder through the use of sites such as MySpace (Chisolm, 2006).There are even websites that list many crimes and incidents that have occurred through social websites, particularly MySpace. Most of the cases are people that have committed a crime and are linked to cyberbullying leading them to their prosecution and for many, their arrest. Though given its immediacy, anonymity, and accessibility, the internet offers an unprecedented forum for defamation and harassment. The salient problem with such “cyberbullying” is that victims are typically left without adequate recourse (Areheart, 2007). Meaning that if even if someone is a victim of cyberbullying very little can be done in order to stop or even catch the perpetrator. As a result of this there are very few cases and laws against these cyberbullies, but fortunately some actions have begun to take place. For instance the case of U.S. vs. Lori Drew which started with this mother Lori Drew that made a fake MySpace account pretending to be a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. Ms. Drew started off being flirtatious to fool the girl into believing “Josh” was real and then made comments like, “the world would be better off without her.” (Welch, 2008) These sorts of comments are believed to be the cause of the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier. Ms. Drew faces up to five years in prison for each account if found guilty (Welch, 2008). Even though it is very difficult to deter cyberwrongs and catch cyberbullies the best thing to do is inform an adult or police about potential cyberbullies. As more cases are being reported, the government is now being forced to take action against these cyberbullies and the media is fortunately making the dangers of online communication more known to society.
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This is definitely a really interesting topic. In fact, the case that you mentioned in this blog I actually saw an entire news report on at the airport the day I went home for Thanksgiving. The whole case really sickened me. The fact that an adult would do something so terrible to torture and cyber-bully this young girl where she was vulnerable really made me angry. While I was watching the story about it, they were in court deciding her sentence. The verdict was that she was not guilty of murder but I think instead she was guilty of conspiracy. Cyber-bullying laws and legals cases are so complicated because it is definitely not black and white. However, it that case I definitely thought the woman should have been found guilty of murder. It was totally premeditated and now that poor little girl is dead because someone told her the world would be a better place without her. It really sucks that we have to worry about things like cyber-bullying. If only we could trust everyone and not have to worry about predators on the Internet.
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