In a Blog post on CNET.com (a news blog) titled "A Rallying Cry Against Cyber Bullying" the authors are supporting proposed legislative action to make Cyber Bullying a crime (or at least more easily prosecuted- as it is often a criminal act).
My problem with this in not whether bullying is right or wrong in any form: it isn't. My issue is that overall we might be over reacting. This doesn't mean that we might not need new legislation to address this new problem (or at least its new location, or format if you will); of course we do. Laws have to change with society, if they didn't witchcraft would still be punishable. When I say overreacting, I mean that because all of the stories we hear about cyber bullying are tragic (they are usually about kids who have killed themselves as a result) that we might be jumping to support overreaching legislation that is aimed at what is probably (all be it unfortunately) a normal childhood behavior moving into a new medium.
For example; a friend of mine (an adult, in her 20's) was arrested for calling someone a bitch on Myspace. The police said it was Cyber stalking (the comment was on her own Myspace page by the way). To my knowledge it isn't illegal to call someone a bitch to their face, but because of the medium used this was considered a crime, which landed her community service and a trip to jail. This is kind of problem I see with this type of legislation aimed at cyber behavior. It may be difficult to strike a balance between safety and protecting our First Amendment rights.
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