Cyberlaw

Cyberspace has become a dangerous place for some people as it enables anonymity, making it possible for some people to commit deviant behaviours. This essay will address cyber-harassment, more specifically, cyber-bullying which is an important problem that countries all over the world have and as it is relatively new, have failed to properly treat it. There is no regulation for cyber-bullying in the UK, but there are a number of acts that can be used in this situations which will be properly analysed to see the positive and negatives sides of its use. Firstly, how the anonymity on the Internet works will be explained, then what is cyber-harassment and how the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 can be applied to this deviant behaviour. Secondly, it will focus on cyberbullying, describing it and then starting with the Acts that can be used, not all of them, but the most important ones. The Acts that will be explained are the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Communications Act

2003, Malicious Communications Act 1988. Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1986, Public Order Act 1994, Computers Misuse Act 1990 and Defamation Act 2013. And finally, it will conclude with the opinion of what would be the best method of regulation for cyber-bullying.

Even though the improvement in the design of software has been important in the past few years, this has also made cyberstalkers and others’ jobs easier by being able to remain anonymous while they carry out deviant or criminal acts. And if that is not enough for a person to commit a deviant or criminal act, there is another layer of security for them, which is erasing all traces of Internet activity from someone’s computer, something really easy to do nowadays with different kinds of softwares.^[1]

        Clearly, technology enables a person to participate in deviant behaviour, such as cyber-harassment. Nevertheless, being able to do something does not mean that a person is motivated to do so, there are other social factors that can motivate someone to take part in deviant or criminal activities trough the Internet.

        The anonymity that the Internet offers generates disinhibition^[2], which can encourage deviant behaviour. Bubaš presented an acertive description to this situation saying that  “In face-to-face communication, individuals are constrained by the social rules that govern interpersonal interaction, immediate negative feedback, and visible consequences of their inappropriate behavior, as well as possible social sanctions. However, when using the Internet the users reside in relative anonymity and physical safety, distant from others in interaction, often unaware of their identities and personalities, as well as of the negative consequences of their risky or potentially damaging behavior. This contributes to the expression of anger or aggression, inappropriate self-disclosure, or personal use of socially doubtful material on the Internet, like pornography.^[3]

        Also, deindividuation, which is ‘a state where an individual’s self-awareness is reduced through membership of a group’^[4], can help to the disinhibition that many Internet users tend to present. A person might involve in criminal or deviant behavior when a group diffuses their individuality, then the person becomes more susceptible to situations that would not happen out of the group context.^[5]

        Cyber-harassment, which will be the category of cybercrime that will be addressed in this essay, is when a person uses a computer in order to cause a personal like anxiety, distress or psychological harm. This is easier for the people committing the crime since there is no need for physical confrontation and it is really easy to send the messages or whatever way the person is harassing its victim.

        In legal terms, harassment can be seen as ‘causing alarm or distress’ offences^[6] and ‘putting people in fear of violence’^[7] offences as it is stated on the Protection Harassment Act 1997, terms which also apply to cyber-harassment and although there is no simple explanation for what cyber-harassment is, it can be divided into direct and indirect harassment: Direct harassment are: threats, bullying, or intimidating messages sent directly to the victim, etc. While indirect harassment are things such as spreading rumors about the victim via Internet, subscribing the victim to unwanted online services or using the victim’s name to send messages.^[8]

        Even if cyber-harassment can also be regulated by the PHA, and is is indeed a good thing that it is regulated and there are consequences if a person commits it, this legislation is not enough to treat cyber-harassment crimes, there needs to be a special regulation specifically talking about those kinds of crimes on the Internet as this situation develops a lot of different problems that are not contemplated on the PHA.

         As it is known, cyber-harassment can be presented in different forms but the one that will be addressed in this essay and perhaps the most important one nowadays is cyber-bullying.

Cyberbullying is considered as a worldwide problem because anyone who has access to technology can commit this crime or be a victim. Nevertheless, as countries have different languages and cultures, legislations must me made nation wide in order to control and regulate specifically the problems in each country according to its laws and regulations. There is no legal term for cyberbullying in the UK law, and it is very difficult to define the parameters of this concept, but it can be described as ‘an aggressive, intentional act carried out by a group or individual, using electronic forms of contact, repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself’.^[9]

However, cyberbullying can sometimes be ambiguous, with two or more people bullying each other. Another subject that complicates the definition of cyberbullying is the ages at which it can take place.^[10] For some people, here lays the difference between cyberbullying and cyber-harassment, because according to Parry Aftab^[11], cyberbullying must occur between minors; when an adult engages in this kind of actions, the behavior is called cyber harassment. Conforming to Aftab, ‘adult cyber-harassment or cyberstalking is NEVER called cyberbullying.^[12] 

Nonetheless, it can be argued that even if the labels of cyberstalking and cyber harassment are correct, they are also a type of cyberbullying for the British society. For example, the British National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NAS/UWT) emphasized that there are circumstances under which teachers are often cyberbullied by their students. ^[13]The problems and confusions regarding the conceptualization of cyberbullying also derive from the fact that cyberbullying, as it happens in cyber harassment, can be direct and indirect; direct cyberbullying is when it is a direct attack such as sending messages directly to the children and indirect cyberbullying is ‘using others to help cyber bully the victim, either with or without the accomplice’s knowledge’.^[14]

As it can be seem, as cyberbullying is relatively a new term, even though bullying has existed since the beginning of times, with the Internet and all the facilities that children have now, this takes it to another level, making it complicated for the UK government, as to the government from other countries all over the world with the same problem, to define what cyberbullying is, and by not defining it, its impossible to regulate it properly because nobody knows exactly what they are dealing with in order to construct a legislation. The first thing that needs to be done is to create a particular definition for what cyberbullying is, the government needs to finish their researches and come up with the best and most accurate definition possible, because if they define exactly what the problem is then it is easier for them to fight it.

 According to the Cybersmile Foundation, which is a cyber bullying charity, every 20 minutes a child between the ages of 10 to 19 attemps to commit suicide in England and Wales, while one in three children in the UK suffer from cyber-bullying^[15], making it obvious that there is an important need for the government to create anti cyberbullying laws as it is a life threatening situation affecting a several number of teenagers and even adults.

As it was stated before, there is no legal definition of cyberbullying in the UK law. Still, the government has a number of existing laws that they apply when a case of cyberbullying is presented, these regulations will be addressed in order to identify when can they be used, how helpful they are to the cases in which they apply and what can be made in order to improve these regulations.

All state schools are required to have anti-bullying policies under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, it states that ‘the head teacher shall determine measures to be taken with a view to encouraging good behaviour and respect for others on the part of pupils and, in particular, preventing all forms of bullying among pupils’.^[16] School directors can take this legislation into consideration when threating with cyber-bullying in their institutes; anyhow, these Act should also include policies and processes that deal with cyber bullying against both teachers and pupils because it can cause confusion regarding how to threat those situations at schools and as cyber bullying is far more developed than just bullying this Act fails to regulate what children or teachers go through thanks to it in the school frame.

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