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Existing law, the Interagency School Safety Demonstration Act of 1985, states that the intent of the Legislature in enacting its provisions is to encourage school districts, county offices of education, law enforcement agencies, and agencies serving youth to develop and implement interagency strategies, in-service training programs, and activities that will, among other things, reduce school crime and violence, including bullying. Existing law establishes the School/Law Enforcement Partnership and charges it with undertaking several efforts intended to reduce school crime, as specified,including bullying.

This bill would specify that bullying, as used in these provisions,means one or more acts by a pupil or a group of pupils directed against another pupil that constitutes sexual harassment, hate violence, or severe or pervasive intentional harassment, threats, or intimidation that is disruptive, causes disorder, and invades the rights of others by creating an intimidating or hostile educational environment, and includes\nacts that are committed personally or by means of an electronic act, as defined.

Existing law prohibits the suspension, or recommendation for expulsion, of a pupil from school unless the principal determines that the pupil has committed any of various specified acts, including, but not limited to, hazing, as defined. This bill, in addition, would give school officials grounds to suspend a pupil or recommend a pupil for expulsion for bullying, including, but not limited to, bullying by electronic act.

On June 30th, Missouri governor, Matt Blunt, signed a bill updating state laws against harassment by removing the requirement in the legislation requiring that such harassing communication be written or made over the telephone. Now, harassment from computers, text messages and other electronic devices may also be considered illegal. The amended law also requires school boards to create a written policy requiring schools to report harassment and stalking committed on school property to local police, including such done via the Internet.

A new state law in Kentucky now requires the state Board of Education to develop disciplinary guidelines for bullying. Under the bullying law, the legal definition of harassment would be changed to include student behavior that causes physical harm, intimidation or humiliation for fellow students. The AB 91 law also says bullying can be done and cause harm to a student through the Internet, phone or by mail. It also elevates bullying to a criminal offense - a class B misdemeanor.

Home Business & Finance News Top News UK World Sports Technology Entertainment Science & Health Environment Motoring Oddly Enough Lifestyle The Great Debate Blogs Special Reports Video Pictures Weather Do More With Reuters RSSRSS Feed Widgets Mobile Podcasts Newsletters Interactive TV Partner Services Career Centre Professional Products Financial Media Support (Customer Zone) About Thomson Reuters RPT-FEATURE-Murder brings scrutiny to fast-growing Craigslist Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:28pm BST Email | Print | Share | Single Page [-] Text [+] "There's a whole field of law emerging which is online media liability law and the question is how much liability do we place on companies that host information other people post online," said John Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor. "The general policy approach we have taken to the Internet starting a decade plus ago was to say there is basically no liability, but these recent cases put to the test that policy," said Palfrey, who is a co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Be prepared to answer questions when the law seems to make little sense, when a law is inconsequential, when a law is widely ignored, or when breaking the law may serve a higher moral purpose. [Doug Johnson]

One of the best wikis on the digiteen project, this wiki covering digital law is marvelous and was put together by 9 students from my classroom here in the US, Qatar, and Austria. This is an excellent wiki on Digital Law and has made my wiki hall of fame for this year! Wow!

Amazing wiki put together by an international team of 9th graders on digital law.

A new law aimed at deterring the proliferation of cyberbullying at public schools goes into effect Jan. 1, bolstering educators' ability to tackle the problem head-on.The law gives school administrators the leverage to suspend or expel students for bullying other students by means of an electronic device such as a mobile phone or on an Internet social networking site like MySpace or Facebook; the law, however, only applies to bullying that occurs during school hours or during a school-related activity.

This site provides reading materials for students studying the law as it applies to activities in cyberspace. The reading materials include edited cases, statutes, treaties, and law review articles, as well as content written by the individual module authors. Some have likened the study of cyberspace law to trying to board a moving bus. Given the pace of change in this field any attempt at a traditional casebook would largely be outdated before it reached the hands of the students. This site is designed to take advantage of the hypertext media offered by the world wide web by providing reading modules that can be altered or replaced as the law changes.

More evidence that kids do not understand what is private in a networked society.
Police have used a law intended to keep pornographic magazines away from children as the basis for arresting four middle-school students accused of using cell phone cameras to snap nude photos of themselves and exchanging the images. Your students should know that exchange of nude photos [another form of cyberbullying] falls under "child pornography" laws and if prosecuted to the full extent of the law, they could spend time in juvenile hall and be forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of their life.

The Copyright Police are checking student multimedia projects for possible copyright violations. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and violators will be prosecuted under the federal law. The Copyright Police are having some difficulty checking leads because there are so many students creating multimedia projects. You and your group have been hired by the Copyright Police to monitor multimedia projects created in our school. The Police Chief will give you information about a multimedia project to investigate and provide some Copyright Guidelines for your group.

The Copyright Police are checking student multimedia projects for possible copyright violations. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and violators will be prosecuted under the federal law. The Copyright Police are having some difficulty checking leads because there are so many students creating multimedia projects. You and your group have been hired by the Copyright Police to monitor multimedia projects created in our school. The Police Chief will give you information about a multimedia project to investigate and provide some Copyright Guidelines for your group.\n

Legal Implications for Searching Student Cell Phones. Although this article is written against Michigan law, it does help clarify some of the concepts for what is permissable. Note that searching a student's cell phone or wireless device without parent permission may violate state wiretapping laws.

Confiscating and looking at information on cell phones by school officials is still not clear. This is a very interesting case study for those working with digital citizenship issues at their school.

Fascinating article explaining Michigan take on searching and confiscating cell phones.

In April of last year, Zack McCune was sued by the RIAA. He ended up $3,000 lighter (he settled), but with a much richer understanding of the contemporary debate surrounding music, copyright law, and file sharing. Part I gives an intro to his story, while Part II explores the disconnect between young downloaders and the recording industry. Part III, presented here, concludes Zack's misadventure and examines where it led him: to the Free Culture Movement, which advocates more flexible intellectual property law.

Amends the Harassing and Obscene Communications Act. Creates the Cyberbullying Law. Provides that the offense of harassment through electronic communications also includes the use of electronic communication for making a harassing statement for the purpose of alarming, tormenting, or terrorizing a specific person on at least 2 separate occasions; or creating and maintaining an Internet website or webpage, which is accessible to one or more third parties for a period of at least 24 hours, and which contains harassing statements made for the purpose of alarming, tormenting, or terrorizing a specific person. Establishes penalties. Effective immediately. The new law takes effect January 1st and provides that the Internet safety curriculums in schools will begin with the 2009-2010 school year. The bill allows the age-appropriate unit of instruction to be incorporated into the current courses of study regularly taught in the districts' schools.

Volunteer agency founded in 1997 to fight online harassment through education of the general public, education of law enforcement personnel, and empowerment of victims. The site lists cyberstalking-related laws for all 50 states. They also have a Kids/Teen division.

An online bullying survey was completed by 216 students - 93.7 percent were freshmen- enrolled in the University Experience classes at Kansas State University. The goal of the survey was to determine if bullying behavior followed students from high school into college and how freshmen perceived bullying. The survey used the cyberbullying definition provided in Kansas' anti-bullying law, which took effect in January 2008 and was revised in July to include cyberbullying. The law requires schools to develop anti-bullying policies, plans and preventative measures. Cyberbullying is the use of any electronic communication device, such as e-mail, instant messaging, text messages, blogs, mobile phones, pages, online games or Web sites, to create an intimidating, threatening or abusive environment.

Governor Rod Blagojevich Thursday signed Senate Bill 2512 legislation to help protect children from the dangers of the Internet. SB 2512 requires school districts, beginning in the 2009-2010 school year, to incorporate an "age-appropriate Internet safety unit of instruction in the current course of study regularly taught in the district's schools," beginning in third grade.

Computers make it easy to make copies of computer software, pictures, words, movies and songs. But copyright laws make it illegal to copy the creative work without the owner�s permission. Making copies of a work protected by copyright is just like stealing. The B4UCopy educational program, available for free download, has a goal of raising awareness of copyright laws and reinforce responsible behavior online.

Exchanging of nude photos via cell phone among kids [another form of cyberbullying] falls under child pornography laws. The long-term implications for these kids can be serious - not to mention the initial humiliation and embarrassment. Prosecution to the fullest extent of the law means time in juvenile hall and potentially having to register as a "sex offender" for the rest of their lives!

Copyright law protects musical and spoken compositions, or "works"; the performance of a work preserved in a sound recording; and the sound recording itself. Podcasting implicates these in three ways: the performance of a work; the playing of a sound recording of a performance; and the reproduction of a sound recording by incorporating it into a podcast. The law is well-settled only as to the first of these.

A Microsoft study done last February found that teenagers between seventh and 10th grades are less likely to illegally download content from the Internet when they know the laws for downloading and sharing content online.