The law is constantly changing and modernizing to accommodate society. Consequently making Law reform pivotal, the need for the law to be changed in correspondence to the dynamic order in which society evolves. Furthermore this indicates that the changes in law should represent changes that take place in society. The conditions that give rise to law reform are new technology, as the law must remain relevant in times of technological advancement. However, law is not keeping up with the fast paced changes in new technology as the development in technology occurs at a much fast rate than the developments in law reform. The fundamental concern for law reform in regards to new technology is how do we maintain justice in cyberspace without infringing on individuals rights? Two main problems law reform agencies must consider as a part of technological advancements include cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is a problem that has become so prominent within modern society as technological advancements are made and law reform agencies must address these emerging technological issue with infringing individuals’ rights at the same time
Cyber bullying is one of many technological issues that continue to drastically impact individuals and their rights in modern society as well as in cyberspace. Due to technological advancements in the recent century, individuals now can have access to a range of devices that connect to the Internet with no limitation or restrictions. Further, making it easier for individuals to be exposed to cyber bullying and have their rights as human infringed. Everyone has the right to be respected, safe and free from violence, harassment and bullying whether it is in real life on in cyber space. Cyber bullying leads to violations of a range of human rights including:
‘ The highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). Cyber bullying have a negative impact on both ones physical and mental health causing harm in the form of physical injuries, stress related illnesses, depression and other health issues
‘ Freedom of expression and to hold opinions with interference (Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Cyber bullying can impact on your freedom to express feelings or opinions, as you no longer feel safe to do so.
The commonwealth legislation governs online stalking and harassment behavior. The crimes
Legislation amendment (telecommunications offence and other measures Act) ‘ (no.2) 2004 makes it a crime to use a carriage service to harass or cause offence. Criminal law specifically deals with cyber bullying as criminal offences in Australia, there a range of general criminal laws, which applies to instances of cyber bullying. Such as Brodie’s law in victoria, has recently widened the scope of their stalking provisions to include behaviors that incudes serious cyber bullying.
There are numerous cases of cyber bullying, it can have a drastic impact an individual’s personal life, and in some cases fatal consequences. Two cases that accentuate the extremities of cyber bulling is the Amanda Todd. Amanda Todd is one of many victims of cyber bullying; she is a normal 15 year old who made the mistake of flashing a stranger via the Internet. However she did not know this man personally, the man started stalking her and asked for further contact. Amanda however, refused to ‘put on a show’ for him again and he wasn’t very happy. He found Amanda’s classmates via online and began sending each member the sexual image of Amanda. Some classmates ostracized her and started spreading rumors of different versions of the story, twisting and adding more than what the story line consisted of. This all became a lot for Amanda to handle so her method of coping with the anxiety she descended into drugs and alcohol. She also attempted to suicide more than one occasion, unfortunately led to her hanging herself on the10th of October 2012. In the article it stats that ‘it is a cultural myth that methods of harassers are fundamentally ‘legal’ and that the state is helpless to intervene in all cases like this. The systematic way the harassers allegedly followed Todd to new schools, repeatedly posting the images and threatening to do it again, makes it textbook harassment regardless of the medium’. However, once police finally realized this, it was too late, Amanda had already deceased and she is not the only one who has harmed themselves due to cyber bullying. Ryan Halligan is another victim of cyber bullying, his speech, language and motor skills development led him to receive special education services from pre-school through the fourth grade. Ryan’s academic and physical struggles made him an ‘easy’ target of a student. In February 2003, a fight between the student and Ryan not only stopped the harassment at school but also ultimately led to a friendship. However when Ryan shared his personal story, the newly found friend returned to being a bully and used to the information to start a rumor that Ryan was gay. This rumor continued to spread and grow into the summer of 2003, although Ryan thought that he had struck friendship with a girl through AOL instant messenger (AIM). He later learned that the girl and her friends thought it would be humorous to make Ryan think the she liked him and use it to share more personal embarrassing material, which was copied and pasted into AIM exchanges with her friends. On October 7 2003. Ryan hanged himself in the family bathroom. There were no criminal charges filed following Ryan’s death because no criminal law applied to the circumstance or especially catered to protecting cyber-bullying victims.
Cyber crime laws are difficult to enforce, as there are a variety of issues that prolong the process, such as jurisdictional issues, the nature of the evidence collected, anonymity and identity of offenders, geographic area and many more issues surrounding. The legal evidence would make cyber crimes like cyber bullying difficult to investigate and prosecute in comparison to most ‘real life’ crimes. The issue with digital evidence is that, it is actually just a collection of ones and zeros represented by magnetization, radio signals, light pulses and/ or other means. Further, making this type of information fragile and can be lost or changed. Another issue making it problematic when enforcing cybercrime laws is the anonymity and identity of the offenders. It is pivotal, even before jurisdiction comes in, to be able to identity and discover where, who the criminal is before you can make an arrest. The issue with cyber bullying and other online crime is there are various ways to hide one’s identity; there are numerous services that will mask a users IP address by routing traffic various services. The last issue that makes cybercrimes difficult to enforce is the barrier to prosecuting cyber crimes because of the location. In most cases offenders are located outside the country or outside the legal jurisdiction of the court and offenders seeking the convictions. Thus, making it difficult to successfully manage to prosecute a cyber criminal if they originate in the same jurisdictions as the victim, further making it a very difficult and long procedure to catch the offender when both the victim and offender reside in different locations.