No.

Liken it to trying to regulate telephone calls. While sad, the child should have brought this to the attention of a parent. We don’t try to police the telephone network because people receive harassing phone calls.

We’re already seeing the beginning of heavy internet censorship. On June 15th, Verizon blocked access to 90,000 newsgroups because the New York State Attorney General found child porn on 88 of them. I am completely against child porn, but catch the perpetrators rather than censor everything for the actions of 0.00097% of groups.

Its ludicrous and should not be tolerated.

You make a very interesting point. She did bring this attention to her parents and this was the response: “After telling her mother, Christina “Tina” Meier, about the increasing number of hurtful messages, the two got into an argument over the vulgar language Megan used in response to the messages and the fact that she did not log off when her mother told her to.” – Click on the second link in the second paragraph.

Maybe the mother should have notified Myspace or the authorities. Speaking of police should social networks create a division to attack this Internet harassment?

I agree with Adam.

Alan and I were talking about making a “kid safe” internet, wherein instead of allowing the government to censor stuff, you have a company make a mirror of the internet based on whitelisted sites.

How many sites do you go to on a daily basis? I’m sure that kids find themselves in fewer nooks and crannies of the internet than I do.

I suppose that the counterpoint is that if you have a kid-only internet, you have a prime location for child-predators, I guess it depends on how much interactivity you want to give this internet.

Ultimately I think this is kind of similar to what google is doing: google is the defacto lense through which I see the internet — and they could be leaving all sorts of stuff out.

Allowing the government to regulate the internet is the first step on a very slippery slope, families should be given the tools (vis-a-vis companies/search engines/whitelisted internet mirrors) to keep their kids safe.

My take is that it depends on how you view the Internet. If you view it as simply a ‘communication tool’ (yet another telephone, for example) then one could argue that censorship is a no-no.

On the other hand, if one were to accept the “social networking”, “web2.0″, “extension of self”, “extra google brain” blather, clearly the Internet has become more than just a ‘communication tool’. One could then argue that there is a need for regulation.

I beleive that we do not neeed another death of a girl. Megan was harrasses and the woman who did this horible thing should Think of the little girls mother and family!!!!!! What would this women do if her own child killed herself because of a bully???

That is ridiculous for any one person or group to regulate something so huge. Besdies, how would they decide what is and is not appropriate? Every person has their opinion. Age also shouldn’t decide which sites are viewed because not every 13 year old has the same maturity level. I think it is to much for anyone to regulate.

It is absurd to even ask such a question. The internet is the single most diverse, complete, and free information source available to the public. Even libraries do not contain as much information as the internet.

Yes, with unlimited free information to all, comes some potential risks. But this is true for most things. However the benefits of free information vastly outweigh these risks. We already cannot rely too heavily on the media as an information source as it delivers twisted and very filtered information. If we allow the government to regulate and filter our one true source of information and knowledge, the internet, we are digging our own graves.

Imagine a world overrun by corruption, where the people don’t even have access to the free communication and information that could save them. We’re already a world with lots of corruption, the last thing we need is to allow Big Brother to control our internet. Big Brother is already way bigger than our founding fathers wanted, and getting bigger.

Like Adam said, catch the perpetrators rather than censor everything for the benefit of less than a percent of the population.

“Those willing to sacrifice essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither, and will lose both.” -Benjamin Franklin