To bind the bully’s fist

An online poll conducted by this newspaper in August revealed that a staggering 75% fear that their own children could be victimised by online bullies. This statistic ties in with similar surveys abroad, and illustrates that concern with the more sinister side to the internet is about as pervasive a phenomenon as the worldwide web itself.

Part of the reason concerns the very real power offered to the user by modern communications technology. Unlike the more traditional 'schoolyard' bullying, the audience for cyber bullying can be very large and reached very rapidly. Moreover, victims can be harassed in the comfort and privacy of their homes, which also implies that unlike the more traditional form of bullying, there is no real safe refuge from cyber harassment.

But while we all can safely agree that there is consensus on the existence of a problem, it does not follow that there is similar consensus on the solution.

As with all complex issues, there is also the danger that any attempt to control one particular phenomenon through specific legislation may only give rise to other unforeseen problems and headaches... especially when one considers the notoriously delicate minefield upon which this entire issue has been constructed: a minefield that involves the fundamental human right to freedom of expression, and also the implicit danger that any new legislation may be abused to stifle even legitimate criticism and/or opinions.

Given the sensitivity of the entire issue, it would have been preferable for a campaign on this subject to steer clear of even the remotest suspicion that any of its members may be hitching a ride on this issue in order to settle purely personal scores.

From this perspective, it doesn't help that the founder and main frontman for the local anti-cyber bullying campaign is himself a long-suffering victim of online stalking and harassment, in the form of a blog that has adopted personal invective and invasion of privacy as its main mission in life.

Inevitably, the fact that the people behind ACHA also include Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando - a mainstay on the above-mentioned hate blog by publicist Daphne Caruana Galizia - can only reinforce the notion that the entire campaign may be motivated by private interests: namely, a desire to somehow silence an admittedly grotesque online aberration, whose online output has served to ultimately undermine the most cherished principles upon which freedom of expression was originally based.

But this is a dangerous platform from which to launch a campaign. The problem is that while ACHA's broader aims are perfectly legitimate, its reason for wishing to address them are undeniably suspect.

To a newspaper with a vested interest in protecting the principle of freedom of speech, the issues raised by this campaign pose a quandary to which there is no obvious solution. On the one hand, it is easy to sympathise with the victims of hate bloggers' increasingly pathological obsessions. But at the same time, one cannot disregard the fact that legislation can by definition apply across the board, even to cases and situations which were far from the legislators' minds when they drew up the laws in question.

In this scenario, it is entirely possible that any legal changes brought about by ACHA may result in unwarranted legal restrictions on other sections of the press which do not indulge in the same practices at all - while simultaneously failing to rein in those media for which the same laws were intended.

Nor is it clear whether any new legislation is in fact needed to address this particular phenomenon. In principle, Maltese law already recognises as crimes harassment, bullying and other such offences. What is perhaps needed as a matter of urgency is an educational campaign to dispel an existing misconception wherein blogs and other online communication tools such as Twitter are somehow 'exempt' from such laws.

As was evidenced by the case in which a man was arrested over alleged 'threats to the Pope' on Facebook, it is crystal clear that laws apply to online statements as much as to printed matter... yet the same laws are applied very discriminately.

If this glaring case of double standards was to be addressed once and for all, a large part of the raison d'etre of the anti-cyber bullying campaign would automatically fall.

Moreover, there are shortcomings within existing laws which are clearly unjust and can easily be addressed: Malta is the only EU jurisdiction where the onus of proof rests with the accused (and not with the person making the claim) in the case of libel. Moreover, unlike other EU countries, Malta lacks a legally constituted body that can serve as an equivalent to the UK's Press Ethics Commission, i.e., to act as a first line of defence for those who feel slighted by claims made in public.

Given the extent of legal options already available, one can only question the wisdom (as well as the possibility of not-so hidden agendas) of pressing for legal changes when none are really needed.