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While some of what is published online may seem libelous (i.e., intended to harm the reputation of another), proving that point can be difficult and expensive. In order to prove libel, you have to prove malicious intent, something that might prove difficult if the offending Web page was put up by an adolescent. And many times, freedom of speech wins out.

Unless an actual crime has taken place, law enforcement officials often are unable to arrest anyone, even if they can identify the culprit. According to Lt. John Otero, commanding officer of the computer crime squad for the New York City Police Department, individuals would actually have to post a direct threat in order for the police to act. "For example, if they say, 'tomorrow I am going to hurt, kill, or injure an individual,' that would constitute a crime," he explains. A person posting such a threat could be arrested and charged with aggravated harassment. Although Otero says his department has seen some arrests, anyone under the age of 18 would not be dealt with harshly: "If the kid is too young, he would get a scolding and the incident would be brought to the parents' attention; if they are under 16, they are considered minors."

Like cliques, cyberbullying reaches its peak in middle school, when young adolescents are trying to figure out who their friends are and whether they fit in. "Third- and 4th-graders are just having fun with computers," says Loretta Radice, who taught computer skills to middle-schoolers in public and private schools for more than 15 years.

The closest U.S. privacy law comes to a legal doctrine akin to copyright is the appropriation tort, which prevents the use of someone else’s name or likeness for financial benefit. Unfortunately, the law has developed in a way that is often ineffective against the type of privacy threats now cropping up. Copyright primarily functions as a form of property right, protecting works of self-expression, such as a song or painting. To cope with increased threats to privacy, the scope of the appropriation tort should be expanded.

John Gay, a police officer for the Cheyenne Police Department in Wyoming, volunteered at the request of Windsor High School principal Rick Porter to speak to students at two assemblies about the dangers of predators surfing social networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook.Gay shared how he could pull pictures off of Windsor High School students who had their own MySpace and Facebook pages. Nordic’s daughter, Shaylah, was one of the students Gay singled out to the point where Shaylah left the auditorium in tears.

Shaylah said Gay showed the other students her phone number, read her blogs and comments out loud.

He kept on picking at her and picking at her and picking at her and everyone said, ‘That’s harassment,’ ” Weakland said.

On her blog, 12-year-old Tavi Gevinson posts photos of herself wielding a toilet plunger, posing in a room covered with newsprint and wearing a paint-splattered tutu inspired by Dolce & Gabbana's spring 2008 collection. She's part of a young generation of fashion bloggers who display their outfits for all to see. "Well I am new here," she wrote March 31 in her first post at Style Rookie. "Lately I've been really interested in fashion, and I like to make binders and slideshows of 'high-fashion' modeling and designs."

Along with marketed content for the PlayStation Portable, Nicolakis said Playboy started a service called iBod. The service started in 2005 and allows users to download soft porn to their device. Wallpaper of nude photos and explicit ring tones are some of the other materials available through built-in Web browsers in portable devices like the iPhone, Nicolakis said, and parental safeguards are nonexistent or just now becoming available. He said another avenue for pornographic material is user-generated photos or videos sent from cell phone to cell phone. Teens are reportedly taking sexually explicit photos of themselves and sending them to friends, but the images can easily be sent without consent to others, Nicolakis said. "That's child pornography, and that's a felony," he said. "If you think you're immune to it here in Modesto, you're wrong. It's probably already happened, you just don't know yet.

Many of the most egregious acts of cyberbullying do not take place during school hours or on school networks, a situation that presents a dilemma for public school administrators: If they punish a student for off-campus behavior, they could get hit with a freedom of speech suit.  If they do nothing, students may continue to suffer and school officials theoretically could get hit with failure to act litigation. For school administrators, it appears to be an unfortunate “catch-22.” For lawyers, it’s a “perfect storm,” pitting freedom of speech advocates against the victims of cyberbullying and schools that try to intervene. There are no easy answers in this arena, few laws, and no well-established precedents that specifically deal with cyberbullying.

“School administrators can intervene in cyberbullying incidents, even if the incidents do not take place on school grounds, if they can demonstrate that the electronic speech resulted in a substantial disruption to the educational environment.”

These cases illustrate not only a lack of precedent on cyberbullying cases, but also a dilemma for school administrators on how to handle cyberbullying.  “There are few laws that address how to handle cyberbullying, and many schools don’t have an internal policy to deal with cyberbullying that takes place off-campus,” offers Deutchman.  “It may take an unfortunate and tragic event on school property to get more schools to consider tackling electronic behavior that originates off campus.  It’s only a matter of time before a cyberbully, or the victim of cyberbullying, uses deadly force during school hours.”

Mobile GPS will open a Pandora’s box of possibilities, say others. “I’d be very concerned about pedophiles or identity thieves hacking into a system and locating me, my wife, or daughter,” says Henry Simpson, who coordinates new technology for the California State University at Monterey Bay (CSUMB). “It raises huge safety issues,” he adds.

But new technologies have always brought new risks – such as identity theft. Philosophically, every technology has both positive and negative values, says Andrew Anker, vice president of development at Six Apart, a Web consulting firm. “In fact,” he points out, “the most positive aspects are what also add the most negative.”

Companies looking to do business on college campuses have paid particular attention to security concerns. Rave Wireless introduced a GPS/MoSoSo enabled phone for students this past year, emphasizing the security value of the GPS feature over its potential to deliver underage victims to predators. While the Rave phones enable students to find like-minded buddies (Bored? Love Indian food? Meet me under the clock!), it also offers a cyberescort service linked to campus police. If the student doesn’t turn off a timer in the phone, indicating safe arrival at a destination, police are dispatched to a GPS location.

According to Doninger, the principal told her that Jamfest was cancelled because of the students’ action. The principal denied saying that. That evening, Doninger posted an entry on her personal blog in which she noted that Jamfest had been cancelled, referred to the district administrators as “douchebags,” and encouraged continued contact with the superintendent to “piss her off more.” The following day the event was rescheduled. Sometime later school officials

The appeals court found that it was reasonably foreseeable that Doninger’s posting would reach campus and that the posting created a foreseeable risk of substantial disruption within the school environment because the language used was offensive. It likely disrupted efforts to resolve the controversy, and the posting that Jamfest had been cancelled made it foreseeable that school operations might well be disrupted further.

There was no evidence of any disruption at school. The only disruption was to the principal and superintendent in responding to what was an impressive response to the student’s call for complaints. There was no indication in the record that the disruption interfered in any way with the delivery of instruction or in any way impacted student welfare. If administrators are not being appropriately sensitive to the interests of students or are engaging in other actions that cause concern, students clearly should have the free speech right to protest and to call for other students and community members to register their complaints. Inconveniencing school administrators under such circumstances should not be considered to constitute substantial disruption.

The problem is that most incidents of cyberbullying occur off-campus because students have more unsupervised time. But the impact is at school where students are physically together. Although there is no data on the extent of harmful impact, anecdotally, it is clear that some incidents lead to students avoiding or even failing school, committing suicide and even becoming violent.

Studies on cyberbullying reported in the December 2007 issue of Journal of Adolescent Health reveal that both perpetrators and targets of cyberbullying report significant psychosocial concerns and increased rates of involvement in offline physical and relational aggression

One study reported that the victims of cyberbullying were eight times more likely than other students to report bringing a weapon to school. The concerns for student safety are very real. Students who do not believe school officials can help them may seek their own revenge or refuse to come to school.

Then, social networking started taking off. First came Friendster, then MySpace and Facebook, and now Twitter. The popularity of texting began soaring, too. All of this makes me wonder: What is Time Warner-owned AOL Instant Messenger doing to ensure that aging Millennials like me keep instant messaging a part of their daily routine?

AOL spokeswoman Erin Gifford said she wasn't sure what efforts the company was deploying to keep 20-somethings interested in messaging. That's not to say AOL Instant Messenger, which debuted in 1997, hasn't remained popular. It currently has about 30.4 million active users in the United States, making it the most popular instant messenger service in the country.

AIM's sweet spot is people between the ages of 13 and 24. They make up about 49 percent of all AOL instant messenger users. That leaves 51 percent of us who are 25 and older.

All of the defendants are charged with possession of child pornography, and some are charged with additional offenses, such as production of child pornography and committing crimes while registered as sex offenders. Those charged include a law enforcement officer, attorneys and men with previous convictions related to the child pornography.

These cases are the result of a coordinated investigation in which law enforcement used sophisticated software to track down computers on which child pornography was being stored and made available to others via peer-to-peer networks. Peer-to-peer networks are an increasingly popular method for sharing files on the Internet. Using software programs such as Limewire, computer users can join networks that allow the sharing of files across the Internet, often for no charge.

Robert Schoch, special agent in charge for the ICE office of investigations in Los Angeles, stated: “Today, those involved in child exploitation - like everyone else - are using the remarkable reach of the Internet, and peer-to-peer technology is the latest frontier. But we have a message for child sex predators who think they can escape justice by hiding in Cyberspace. We will do everything in our power and use every tool at our disposal to keep our children safe - whether they are around the block or around the world.”

A survey conducted by MSN United Kingdom found that 74% of teens as compared to 80% in this study did not go to anyone for advice when they were cyberbullied (www.msn.co.uk/cyberbullying, 2006). One reason some teenagers are reluctant to tell parents or adults is the fear of retaliation.

Many times parents don't get involved because they are afraid of invading their teen's privacy. Others may feel that as long as they have filtering software their teen is protected from negative material.

Parents need to be educated about cyberbullying- what it looks like, what the effects are and how to handle it. Rosalind Wiseman, educator and author of the best seller "Queen Bees & Wannabes", suggest parents consider the following: Use technology as an opportunity to reinforce your family values. Attach rules and consequences if inappropriate behavior occurs. Move the computer out of your child's bedroom and into the family room. Teach your child not to share passwords. Install monitoring and filtering software. Monitor your child's screen name(s) and Web sites for inappropriate content. If cyberbullying occurs, save and print out any evidence and decide whom you should contact for assistance.

The Atlanta-based parenting columnist, former elementary school teacher, kids' pop culture expert, author, and mother of four spent a couple of weeks in Club Penguin to learn what her eight-year-old son might experience there. She didn't like everything she saw.

As soon as there's a new technology, it's used for sex," says Sarah Jacobs, curator of the Museum of Sex in Manhattan, which explains why people of all ages and persuasions send out naked pictures via cell phone, Craigslist and MySpace and post their sex videos on sites like YouPorn.

In the past six months alone, there's been a deluge of news stories about middle- and high-school students getting into trouble for sending around naked pictures and sex videos of themselves or classmates. The disposition of the cases has been wildly disparate: Some kids are arrested, some punished at school and others are lectured about online safety.

Parents are worried about a new form of stranger danger in the form of cyber-bullying - abuse through email, chatrooms or text messaging.

The issues around Internet safety often arose when adults such as parents or teachers did not understand the importance of the online world to their children. "You get children as young as 8 now who say, 'Take away my phone and take away my life'," he said. When children thought they would be restricted from the Internet and mobile phones if they reported bad experiences, such as bullying, they were less likely to report it, he said.

They said the worst part of cyber-bullying was the distance between the perpetrator and the victim. "They don't have to see the consequences if they post a comment or a picture in a chatroom," Hannah said.

As a whole, the education industry is usually relatively slow to integrate technology into the classroom. In lots of schools nationwide, unbridled access to computers and the Internet is still the exception rather than the rule.

The moment students get outside of the classroom, on the other hand, social networking is almost a daily ritual.

Dedicated commercial Web 2.0 products and social networking applications are still too new and too rich for typical school leaders to afford. So third-party providers are more likely to offer technology services to students and their schools to expand their horizons in ways never before possible. For example, some school districts are going beyond e-mail technology and using collaboration software and online services to share information, host Web conferences and assign tasks and projects.

Several local teachers and professors see Second Life as a tremendous opportunity. There are educational islands in Second Life where teachers can go to digitally swap ideas, conduct research or attend real life conferences.

However, a teacher can take students on a virtual field trip in Second Life - using his or her own login - to places like the Alamo or the Louvre Museum, both of which have been impressively recreated in Second Life.

The University of Alabama is using Second Life too. In fact, Professor Rick Houser, Chairman of Educational Studies at the Capstone, is working on building an entire virtual University of Alabama campus in Second Life.

we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self.

Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.