Indeed, I just deleted a topic where someone was inquiring about suicide methods. 90% of the posts were egging the person on. That wouldn't be the first suicide on the site, probably won't be the last.

I was referring to the actual crimes, not the internet in general.

As in you follow them around the internet, hack their email, spread personal stuff around, put up naked pictures of them, etcetera etcetera.  The police won't do shit, if they file a report they might not even read it.  You could probably go and turn yourself in, explain your crimes in detail, and just get told to fuck off and stop wasting their time.  Now if they go and kill themselves, you're fucked.  Depraved indifference, the works, the entire contents of the book will be used to nail your ass to the wall.

Major incident, people pay attention, careers can be made or lost on the outcome.

While all of that is true, it's also not always in a buisiness's best interest to get the police involved. Case in point, a few years ago a 14 year old girl posted a nude picture of herself. She probably could have been charged witha crime, but as a minor she wouldn't get much. Of course, every person who viewed said picture committed a felony whether or not they knew her age. Even though the picture was not hosted by the site, we could have been held liable, or possibly charged criminally, for allowing a link to exist.

In that situation, the best thing for the site in general was to delete any topic containing said link, referring to said link, dropping clues as to how one might find said link on one's own, etc etc etc. I believe at one point even mentioning her username was enough to get a post deleted. This still pops up occasionally.

Of course, this wouldn't have been quite so bad if she had posted entirely anonymously. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the picture showed her face, and she was immediately recognized by users who knew her in real life. One of whom, of course, began posting her personal information. No law inforcement was ever involved (that I know of, anyway) because the site staff was able to handle it on their own. And the whole mess probably would have been avoided if she had known there would be personal concsquences to her for posting the picture in the first place.

You have some funny ideas on what constitutes a crime, a public posting of child pornography doesn't make everyone that walks past it guilty of possessing child pornography.  It must be intentional, along with other requirements depending on the state you live in, and the host would only be liable if they left it up after knowing it was a minor.

Covering up the crime on the other hand is problematic, you were legally required to report it most likely.

Probably couldn't have gotten anything done, but meh...

Agreed; that said the intent to violate the law is missing -- he was honestly trying to comply with the law, just didn't know the 'right' way to do so.  Ergo he does have a defense.  (Not a great one, but since the girl posted it herself it doesn't need to be all that 'heavyweight' a defense...)

!Note:  I'm not a laywer, that's my laymen's interpretation of the law speaking.!

Virtually nobody knows what the hell my nickname stands for, and I don't disclose it, but it's one I came up with and now use extensively. Those people with names like Unconquerable (heh) you know are gonna be retards, although he was a fantastic player. Anyone who knows me both in person and online agrees that I am a much better person online. Anonymity doesn't always make people a fuckwad.

Plus, I am curious as to how you enforce any law, at all, on the Internet. It is even used to spread child pornography, commit terrorism, incite to murder, harass. There are a LOT more serious things going on than trolling, and none of those are stopped. How would you prevent say a site hosted in international waters, on a space station, the Arctic or Antarctic, or any country that doesn't enforce this? The Pirate Bay shows how it can be done, and even sites like Isohunt which exist in developed nations such as Canada. Hell, they even sued the Canadian record industry. Win.

The proliferation of massive organized crime (and civil violations) on the Internet shows that the law of any nation cannot be imposed here.

I am fairly sure that although such a girl would be technically guilty, not even US courts would pass a significant sentence.

With cops and a judicial system, just like any other laws. You're giving the tech a bit too much credit. True, many areas where people want "enforcement" are technically challenging (and part of that "tech" is the legal context, including national and state boundaries). But even small cities like mine have local police whose beat is the nets. I don't even now what sorts of success rates the various net cop crews are claiming (and I wouldn't take them very seriously if I did), but there are people busted all the time for kiddie porn, copyright violations, etc.

Law in the phsyical world works the same way. Just because some folks get away with murder doesn't mean there's no enforcement, just that enforcement is inevitably imperfect.

If you think about it, I would say that very few (if any) of these forum trolls have the guts to do this face to face, where they would likely get punched out.

I don't think the article, or any of the articiles reference from that article, had anything to do with removing privacy.  Just anonymity.

The two are inextricably linked.

The difference is that most murderers are caught. The vast, vast majority of people who commit crimes over the Internet (or copyright violation) are not caught or punished in any way. Yes, the cops bring people in, but they're little more than tokens used to scare people. Why do you think piracy is rampant and murder is not? Because getting away with piracy is a piece of cake. Even the piracy filesharing hosts (insofar as hosts exist) such as the Pirate Bay and Isohunt publicly exist, with servers that you can find. No murderer exists like that before being caught.

another theoritical option would be for society as a whole grow-up and mature. But that wont ever happen:(

The US homicide solve rate is only 70%, and that counts a lot of suicides and accidental deaths in there.  The actual murder solve rate is even lower.  It's mostly on account of criminals being fucking morons that they solve hardly any of them.

Indeed. I just said "get away with murder" because it is a well-used phrase. My real point is that the question is a matter of budget priorities, but phrases like that often make a reader stop at the word "priorities." We could have plenty of so-called cybercriminals in jail (or at least paying big fines) *if* we wanted to shift law enforcement budget lines away from things like homicide or traffic units. A big enough budget allocation across enough enforcement organizations might even be able to give the whack-a-mole warez sites enough problems to drive them to some sneaker-net strategy instead of the current work-from-the-wilderness stuff.

Basically, at some level all law enforcement, at least here in the US, is a "token gesture" because there's no hope of near-complete enforcement without a real, live police state.