CRIME in Cyberspace

In order for a crime to be committed, rules and regulations must be in place for the criminal to break. The online community, Facebook, has outlined their rules to be followed on a page titled "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities". On this page, they state that they cannot completely ensure the safety all of the users. As a result, they look to the users themselves to help. Facebook states that the users can help by following the rules outlined, which if everyone participated in doing so, would ensure the safety of the community. This page of terms can be found by clicking the link 'Terms' at the bottom of any page on Facebook. If a user violates any of the specified terms, especially if they continue to violate them, the administrators of Facebook will e-mail or notify that person and tell them that if they do not stop acting against the terms of service, that Facebook has the right and will exert that right to discontinue the offender's service to the online community. If the guilty continue to commit their offense after the notification, Facebook will proceed to delete their membership from the website.

I believe this method of dealing with crime on Facebook is a very fair approach. First of all the person had access to the rules and regulations of the community the whole time that they were a member. Therefore, they can not legitimately claim that the information of the offense was not provided. Also, Facebook notifies the user of their act of crime against the community and gives them time to change their ways, which helps if they did not know what they were doing was wrong. The notification gives them the information of this wrongful act so that they can cure their ignorance and discontinue it for future online activity with the group. The person goes against the warning at their own risk knowing that their service will be discontinued if they repeat the wrongful act again. There is nothing hidden from the user, therefore this action against crime is a fair action to take.

Though I may think this way of punishment is fair, I don't think that it is very effective. I feel that if a person named Joe Smith gets kicked off of Facebook, Joe Smith can create another e-mail address and a new name like Victoria Blum and get a new account on Facebook and Facebook would never know that it is the same person in which they had previously banned. I point this out to demonstrate the one of the main differences in dealing with crime that is committed online and crime that is committed in real life. Depending on how creative a person is, they can almost always get around rules on the Internet. Yet in real life, one goes to court and either gets convicted or does not. There are not many ways to escape punishment in real life convictions in comparison to online convictions. Facebook's manner of dealing with crime may not be very effective in an overall sense, but in dealing with an online community, I do not see any other way of effective punishing the person online.