Internet harassing law

In 2006, after being harassed by an apparent internet friend, a 13-year-old girl committed suicide. The widespread coverage and public outrage resulted in Missouri, United States, governing body to install a task force on Internet harassment and work out a proposal on an Internet harassing law. In another instance, a South Carolina resident, a 38-year-old male, was sentenced in an Internet harassment case to five years of probation, for using the Internet to harass a former lover.

Lately the Internet is increasingly becoming the playground for various cyber-harassing and cyber-stalking individuals, employing the new technology to harass, stalk, annoy, threaten and abuse their victims. The number of incidents is rising and many cyber crime task forces now employ professionals to handle such cases of cyber offences. Since that harassment and stalking are not new crimes, just translated transgressions to the virtual world, the existing laws are being reworked to cover these new developments.

The “Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005″ incorporates a little section which is meant to address cyber-stalking and other forms of harassment happening online, whereby the existing laws have been extended to cover the Internet and VoIP harassment and stalking offences. There were heated discussions regarding the wording of the law, moreover the word “annoy”, which can be interpreted in just too many ways, would give an open invitation to frivolous lawsuits. But the other parts of the same paragraph limit the use to “intentionally” and “hiding your identity”, which means if the woman you are addressing knows who you are, you still may curse her out. This does not mean she will not sue you, but the possibility existed before this law was implemented anyway.

In Europe, most prominently in the EU, there is an applicable law for telecommunications covering such occurrences already in place, whereby the harassment over the telephone and cyber-harassment are similarly handled. Like in so many other instances, there is no actual Internet law, but provisions of existing jurisprudence have been extended to provide coverage to new kinds of harassment, resulting in a de facto Internet harassing law.

In future, if an individual hides his identity and frequents to harass another individual by means of the Internet, not only is this person prone to court procedures, but also may be charged with misdemeanor and felony charges by a District Attorney and be subject to investigation by authorities. Under the new proposed law in Missouri, if an adult harasses a minor over the Internet intentionally and hiding his or her identity, then this individual can be charged with a felony.