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Author’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course: Date: Cyberbullying The federal judge was not able to find any criminal violation against the cruel Missouri woman, for the internet hoax role she played against a teenage girl which eventually ended up in suicide. This can be attributed to the limitations of the law as pointed out by the U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien. The attorney pointed out that there was a lacuna in law to address cyber-bullying. The prosecutors at Missouri were also not able to find an applicable statute to prosecute the case. Another reason for failure in the conviction can be traced to the fact that she was not charged for directly causing the death of the teenager. She was somewhat charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This amounted to three misdemeanor crimes of unauthorized access to a computer (CBS News 1). There have been recent developments in laws for addressing cyberbullying. Some states have come up with laws to regulate cyberbullying, but enforcement is a challenge. Cyberbullying is also mostly considered a civil matter rather than a criminal case. Existing laws such as criminal harassment statutes are usually used in prosecuting cyberbullying cases. Recently, many states have come up with cyber harassment statutes, others have included cyberbullying in their bullying laws. Though the laws may not directly attribute criminal liability to cyberbullies, they provide directives to institutions to create policies on bullying. Penalties for cyberbullying are dependent on the state and the applicable law. They range from civil penalties to jail time for misdemeanors and felonies. (Selkie et al. 126) Civil law is a branch of law
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