Anonymous Cyberbullying Methods

According, to Google the definition of cyberbullying is the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. There are numerous ways in which the current legal context is prepared to address cyberbullies and their behavior, but while some of these methods can be more effective than others they still have ways to go. I would charge Anonymous group with cyberbullying and based on my information researched, could be legally prosecuted with the full extent of the law. The methods that could be used to prosecute Anonymous group would be via criminal law and defamation law. According to the book Digital Media Law, criminal law addresses violations against the state (government)

14). Furthermore, according to most state statutes criminal law falls into two categories: (1) those focusing on causing a breach of the peace, and (2) those focusing on publishing a statement or object tending to impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue, or reputation or expose the natural defects of someone and thereby to expose him to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule. Another law that I could use to legally prosecute Anonymous would be the use of the defamation law. According to Paul Kostroy, in the lawsuit Romaine vs. Kallinger defamation was defined as essentially a catch-all term for any factual statement that hurts someone's reputation. Courts defined defamation as a statement that is “false and injurious to the reputation of another or exposes another person to hatred, contempt or ridicule or subjects another person to a loss of the good will and confidence in which he or she is held by others.” As much as Anonymous tries to portray themselves as the protector they are the perfect example of a cyberbully, whose goal is to intimidate, threaten, and cause

In the Amanda Todd case, we can see that Anonymous tried to commit harm and defame another individual after going after her “supposed” stalker and bullying him. As I wrote earlier, in my assignment, they went after the wrong person and accused him of being the stalker of Amanda Todd and nearly ended up destroying his life. How “innocent” was he? maybe not so innocent, but still he was not Amanda’s tormentor and not even the stalker of interest (even if he was the stalker they should have given the information they had to the authorities). They posted his private information, sent him threatening messages, and defamed his character, should they be allowed to get away with this? If they are not stopped their bullying will, at some point, endanger someone fatally. Unfortunately, even if we wanted to prosecute them, with my legally prosecutable methods above, a group like Anonymous would be very difficult to find because the humans (cyberbullies) behind them lurk in the shadows of the internet and make themselves nearly impossible to be traced. In an article, “Did Hacker Group Anonymous Threaten Blogger Who Posted Images of Cyber-Bullying?”, the author writes that she was threatened by Anonymous and received scary intimidating messages that threatened her for posting information about Amanda Todd and