Dharun Ravi's indictment for hate crime is an important signal that bullying is a criminal offence, online or otherwise
Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers University student who posted a video of his roommate having sex with another man, has been charged by a grand jury with hate crime and invasion of privacy. Tyler Clementi ? the talented young violinist who was "outed" on camera ? committed suicide last September. In a statement after the charges were laid, Clementi's parents said:
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"The grand jury indictment spells out cold and calculated acts against our son Tyler by his former college roommate."
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Whatever happens in court, it seems clear that the world of cyberspace ? where college students engage rampantly ? throws up questions of privacy with far-reaching implications. The resolution of this case will signal whether virtual bullying remains a social mischief or an egregious criminal offence.
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A remarkable fact in this tragic story is that even Clementi posted the decision to seek his own death online. The entire episode ? from Ravi's unwelcome videotaping to Clementi's announced suicide ? was conducted online. A growing generation of young people appear to understand human interactions first through a computer. This perhaps represents a significant marker of a generation gap ? and a headache of regulation for parents and legislators.
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We already know that there is precious little privacy online. Mark Zuckerberg famously declared last year that privacy was no longer a "social norm". "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," he said about changes to Facebook privacy settings.
For certain, the distinction between decisional and spatial privacy have been collapsed by social media. The former deals with matters pertaining to self-identification and intimate choices, while the latter is about one's control of information regarding one's physical space and activities. This story exploded both concepts, as Clementi was outed as gay by live streaming of his sexual activity with a man. Ravi, by secretly filming Clementi, gave his hapless roommate no opportunity to agree to whether his intimate affairs were shared with nameless viewers, and no say in his sexual orientation becoming known to the public.
A daunting fact about online habitation is that its full implications are not readily grasped. Shared information is not entirely retrievable; few statements can ever be truly erased, as Sarah Palin has learnt from her grammar errors on Twitter. We may all be permanent hostages to every utterance that we have ever made online.
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An intriguing tension exists between those who believe there is a need for codified ethics and others who are of the view that the internet is intrinsically a space of self-regulation. As cyber culture is so heavily driven by youth, an older generation of legislators will be hardpressed to legislate for this murky terrain ? at least, sufficiently to put in place agreed rules of engagement. From a tragic incident�such as this, it is clear that social media technologies can produce outsized consequences for seemingly self-contained actions.
It is left for a court of law to determine whether Ravi was motivated by malice against Clementi due to his sexual orientation ? thereby constituting a "hate crime". But the grand jury's indictment in this case makes an even more�important point: the internet is not an amoral space;�ethical and legal obligations flow from everything that we do online. Technology�might have radically reshaped attitudes to�privacy, but a bully with a videocamera is�still�accountable for a�callously stupid expose.
Source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/commentisfree/rss/~3/O7qDz2zdZyk/gay-rights-new-jersey
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