Cyber Law

With the current advancement in the communications world, cyber bullying also has started to emerge from behind the safety of Internet anonymity.

Cyber bullying crime is the new face of traditional bullying in which a student threatens another with physical abuse, invades their personal e-mail account and leaks the private information outside, posts denigrating remarks about them or their digitally altered images with obscene features - and all these are done through the technical media, such as Internet or mobile phones. Cyber bullying is different from cyber stalking which characterizes the harassment of an adult by an adult. When a child posts something disparaging about the school authority or a teacher, it is not cyber bullying. Repeated harassment with unsolicited mails and messages also counts among the crimes.

The key explanation for cyber bullying crime becoming rampant has more than one reason. An individual can remain anonymous on the Internet without divulging a single detail of hi/her whereabouts. This lets the culprit escape the crime scene easily. The advantage of staying anonymous and invisible while harassing someone allows the criminals to attack someone much stronger than them. Moreover, perhaps the biggest loophole of the web media is that it is just impossible to stop any defamatory stuff from circulating of the world wide web once it is posted. Therefore, even if the perpetrator is caught at a later date, considerable damage has already taken place by then through the global access to any downloadable information.

The menace of cyber bullying crime often leaves a deep scar in the victim's mind that can not be erased. Teenagers experiencing bullying often become life long sufferers of depression, lack of self esteem and trust, poor concentration and worsened relationships with friends and family. Some even take to ending their own life, being unable to bear the ignominy any more. While many states are now coming up with whole new sets of cyber crime laws to eliminate this menace, parents and the school authority should also come forward to help the victimized students and take stern action against the rowdy students. Parents should keep a vigilant eye on the sites their children visit and also explain the danger of revealing personal information on the social networking sites to them. An unfortunate incident of cyber bullying should immediately be brought to the notice of the local authority.