Dealing with the dark side of Facebook

It was the fortnight when Queenslanders saw Facebook's dark side.

It began with the posting of sickening pornographic images on a site set up to pay tribute to slain schoolboy Elliott Fletcher.

A week later, eight-year-old Trinity Bates was dead, and within 24 hours police were searching for more online vandals.

While one group of troublemakers was busy defacing her tribute page, another gang of online vigilantes was foregoing the justice system and calling for the death penalty for her accused murderer.

And if that wasn't enough, the week ended with news a schoolboy had been suspended after setting up a sarcastic site over missing schoolboy Daniel Morcombe, while 20 high school students were suspended for bullying teachers online.

So many high-profile incidents in such a short time has sparked a storm of public outrage, with Premier Anna Bligh personally penning a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, while Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he would consider appointing an online ombudsman, describing cyber crime and internet bullying as "frankly frightening".

In a letter to Ms Bligh, Facebook's Elliot Schrage and Debbie Frost said the eradication of tasteless material was "not somethign we or any society can deliver".

But despite the headlines, experts have rejected calls for tougher regulation of the internet - instead placing the onus on users.

Macquarie University's John Selby, who lectures on internet regulation, said laws that criminalise acts such as defamation, child pornography, racial vilification, inciting violence and causing pyschological or economical harm already existed and applied to the internet.

There was little governments could do to further limit comment without crossing the invisible line that promises freedom of speech, he said.

"In analysing this problem, I don't think we want to rush to regulate so rapidly as to stifle all the good benefits [of the internet]," Mr Selby said.

"Holding back on the rush to say there should be more regulation would be a more measured approach than saying the government needs to do something, then doing it in a rush.

"What needs to be assured is that the existing laws are appropriately applied."

University of NSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre executive director David Vaile said making website owners or internet providers more accountable for online content would lead to their demise and see the end of free social networking sites.

"The more of an obligation you put on anyone in the chain, the more you destroy the business model that makes these services possible," Mr Vaile said.

"If you say you need one trained lawyer ... for every 50 users, that's most of the social networking models out the window.

"So there's a lot of short-sighted solutions that have been proposed [by people] that haven't really thought things through."

Mr Vaile said setting the boundaries on what was illegal also posed a problem, with standards often subjective.

Much of the recent cyber-vandalism would remain legal no matter how heavy-handed regulations became.

"A lot of the stuff that's out there that's become the problem is silly stuff that might be just insensitive," Mr Vaile said.

"It's not the sort of stuff that, if there was an implied protection of free speech, ... would be protected."

Mr Vaile said as access to the internet and its benefits had grown it had become more unruly and the best approach was to bring the online society back into line.

Much of the problem lied with the fact many internet users did not understand the consequences of their online behaviour - both the impact on other people and the legal ramifications.

More could be done to remove the anonymity that allowed users to hide behind online profiles, he said.

Source: brisbanetimes.com.au