The “Cyber Struggle”

In an earlier post entitled “Navigating the Web of Legislation”, I discussed how in 2012, Albany County attempted to respond to cyberbullying by passing a law that makes participating in cyberbullying, a crime. This law was the response to a case involving a 15 year old high school student by the name of Marquan Mackey-Meggs, who was also the first to be charged under this law. The then teenager, who was a student of Cohoes High School, created a Facebook page entitled “Cohoes Flame page”. The contents of this page included graphic and sexual comments about his peers ranging between ages 13 to 16. Mackey-Meggs would post photos of other students and would include insulting captions about whoever was in the photo. He identified some of the students that were listed on his page as individuals he has performed sexual acts with. He also accused some students of being promiscuous, listing their alleged sexual partners, and labeling some of them as “sluts”.
Police were able to track down Mackey-Meggs by his IP address and charged him as an adult with eight counts of violating the Albany cyberbullying law as well as harassment. He told police the page was meant to be funny and it sounds to me as if he were trolling. As mentioned in an earlier post, trolling entails making nasty comments about others via the internet with the intent to inflict emotional pain as well as get a rise out of viewers.
The Cohoes judge dismissed the harassment charges but not the charges on cyberbullying counts which can result in a fine of up to $1000 as well as one year in prison. Mr. Mackey-Meggs pleaded guilty to one of the counts of cyberbullying, but only on the condition that he could challenge if the law was constitutional in higher state courts. His sentence was three years probation.
Summer of 2014, New York’s highest court deemed Albany County’s cyberbullying law unconstitutional being that it is too broad and it also violates the First Amendment’s protection of speech. Albany County Local Law C’s description of cyberbullying goes as follows: “sending hate mail, with no legitimate private, personal or public purpose, with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten, abuse, taunt, intimidate, torment, humiliate or otherwise inflict significant emotional harm on another person”. Because the law was deemed as too broad, the courts are in the process of narrowing it down.
The majority of cyberbullying for teenagers does not happen via email, it happens via social media networks. The intent of the law is good and lawmakers are acknowledging the fact that cyberbullying is a problem that is only worsening as technology continues to advance. What is difficult is defining what actually constitutes as bullying. I supposed extreme examples of aggression, such as insisting someone kill themselves, could easily be classified as bullying. But what about the expression of other forms of negativity that are not as extreme? There’s also no way to include every single word in the dictionary one could use to inflict harm as examples of bullying and words can easily be interpreted differently. Lawmakers have their work cut out for them, but they are indeed trying.