STRICTER PENALTIES FOR CYBERSPACE MISUSE AND ABUSE

In light of recent events involving cyber bullying and the suicide rates amongst teens and adults, I am requesting that stricter penalties be imposed on the particular websites that this cyber bullying and cyber suicide happens; that criminal and civil charges be filed against the website and the perpetrator/perpetrators who committed the cyber bullying and/or encouraged the victim to commit suicide.  In addition, if the website or other entity had been forewarned of the cyber bullying taking place, that they can be solely and legally responsible.

For purposes of confirmation of what constitutes cyber bullying and cyber suicide, here are some definitions of each:

Cyber-bullying involves the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group that is intended to harm others.

Cyber-suicide involves the death of an individual due to the deliberate cyber bullying, harassment and encouragement of said members of website or entity to commit suicide. 

Below are some cases of cyber bullying and/or cyber suicide:

1.    Kevin Neil Whitrick, or shyboy_17_1 (August 17, 1964 - March 21, 2007) was a British citizen and an electrical engineer.  Whitrick's death was highly publicized as the first live, online-webcasted suicide.  Get on with it, said net audience as man hanged himself on webcam.  Detectives are investigating whether people in an internet insult chatroom goaded a British man into killing himself.  ABOUT 100 internet chatroom users who witnessed a British man kill himself online - including some who allegedly incited him to hang himself - were being traced by detectives this weekend to be questioned over their roles in the cyber suicide.

1. Brandon Vedas died of a drug overdose while engaged in an Internet chat, as shown on his webcam.
2. Abraham Biggs, 19, committed suicide by consuming significant quantities of pain killers and temazepam, and streaming his suicide live on Justin.tv under the name feels_like_ecstacy . Before he fell unconscious and subsequently died, Biggs was also chatting on a body building forum, where he had reportedly threatened to commit suicide on numerous occasions.

4.    Megan Taylor Meier (November 6, 1992 %u2013 October 17, 2006) was an American teenager from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri who committed suicide in October 2006. Her suicide was attributed to cyber-bullying through the social networking website MySpace. The account through which the bullying took place purportedly belonged to a 16-year-old male named "Josh Evans." However, the mother of a former friend of Meier, Lori Drew, later admitted creating the MySpace account with her 18-year-old employee, Ashley Grills and her (Lori Drew's) daughter. Several people contributed to running the faked account, including Drew.  Witnesses testified that the women intended to use Meier%u2019s e-mails with "Josh" to get information about her and later humiliate her, in retribution for her allegedly spreading gossip about Drew's daughter.  A federal grand jury indicted Lori Drew on May 15, 2008, on three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress, and one count of criminal conspiracy.  Drew was found guilty on three lesser charges (reduced from felonies to misdemeanors by the jury) on November 26, 2008. The jury was deadlocked on the fourth felony charge of criminal conspiracy.  The case has caused several jurisdictions to consider legislation prohibiting harassment.

1. ChoiJin-sil, over the Internet Suicide of South Korean actress fuels Internet debate.  The government wants to toughen the punishment for cyber-insulters, who are cited as a factor in the death of ChoiJin-sil.  But some say free speech is at stake.
2. Jesse Logan, This young woman hanged herself after repeated verbal abuse from her classmates regarding nude photos of herself that she sent to a former boyfriend. Walking down the hallways she reported being called a slut and various other names.  When her mother found her, she had hanged herself and her cell phone was on the floor.

These are just a few examples of cyberspace members being the cause of people being bullied or encouraging committing suicide.  I myself being a member of blackplanet.com was encouraged to commit suicide and encouraged to do it faster because I was taking too long.  This was after months of torture, harassment, humiliation, bullying, slandering, and defamation at the hands of one person who planted information all over the site about me and sent his cohorts, men and women, after me causing me distress.  The attempted assisted suicide almost resulted in my committing suicide.

PLEASE PUT AN END TO THIS PSYCHOLOGICAL SUFFERING AND POSSIBLE DEATHS BEING IMPOSED AT THE HANDS OF OTHERS.  AT EACH END OF THE COMPUTER ARE HUMAN BEINGS.