Violent Crime on the Internet

Abstract

Currently, countries around the world face a problem with the new form of violence concerning information technology as a tool or space of violation, e.g., publishing a secret story of other people for their humiliation, sending threatening information via electronic communication system or depressing victim. Level of frequency, impacts and consequences can certainly differ in respective countries depending on proportion and quantity of internet access and culture for using violence in the society as well as measures for solving problem including legislation and law enforcement. Online violence in many cases causes an impact on the victims over the expectation of the offender, e.g., deeply investigating for private information of the victim, impersonation of the victim, dismissed from school, laid off from work, threatened to murder or suicide. Due to these facts, many terms are defined to describe such specific behaviours, e.g., cyber harassment, cyberbullying, cyber threats or cyberstalking. Several terms have, however, overlapped definition to the other, which can create confusion of their meaning and synonymity. In this article, we focus on differences in definition of these terms. Moreover, we research on legislation and law enforcement related the term and topic in many counties. Moreover, we discuss the suitability of the Thai law to the problem. However, such behaviour must not be solved merely with the legal measure. In many cases, non-legal solutions such as proper and serious social inhibition measure or emotional immune of the youth can be more necessary and suitable. The State should be aware that legislation and law enforcement to the people must only be done by the case of no other choice. Extra intervening of a daily life of the people by the state can be allowed only for the protection of a specific group of the people, which must be proportionate to the protection of the freedom of expression of the citizen.