It's an interesting issue. On the Megan Meier case you'd be seriously hard pressed to blame any of that on bad parenting. The parents were very involved in their daughter's life in the way you should be involved in your manically depressed teenager's life. Yes, there was an argument, but looking at the incident leading up to it as a whole, I'd be suprised if there wasn't one. Multiple phone calls, girl getting extremely agitated, mother telling her to get off the internet and they'd talk about it when she'd get home, and she wouldn't. Argument ensues. Far from negligence or undue authoritarian exercises there. It's easy to say she could have handled it better, it's a different story to actually put yourself in someone else's shoes.
Where this comes into play is a twisted and malicious act by an adult toward a child, and the internet was used as a tool. It falls into a legal gray area, and as such there is a legislative vacuum where the police and federal government would not act because they knew technically no laws were broken simply because it occurred on the internet instead of in a chain letter, in person, on a physical bulletin board, or even on the phone. So, what are you left with? No where to turn really. Sure, there's civil court, but civil court by nature isn't meant for criminal acts. There are things you can't put a price on and it's not a system built around justice - rather renumeration, and it's more of a pissing contest between lawyers with the higher paid often just winning out. In some cases it serves the purpose, in others it does not. Trust me, you would rather lose a civil loss of life case than a manslaughter or murder case. It's not even about the jail time, it's about the burden of proof and official government and public recognition that yes, you are a criminal and capable of grossly immoral acts.
So, you have cases like this where there really is no sense of justice and what comes of it? When people feel a system has failed a secondary system almost always rises up to take it's place and serve 'natural justice'. The woman accused of harassing Meier has had every ounce of her personal information posted on the internet, her workplace and home have been flooded with calls, there has been vandalism to their house, and so on. A dangerous situation for everyone. This is usually when lawmakers have to take notice and make it so that in the future the justice system can step in so there is at least a public perception of justice attempting to be served.
It's a bit of a tough issue because on one hand you have the freedom of speech, yet on the other you to consider that your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. Practicality demands a trade off where if you expect freedom of speech while enjoying legal protection from the natural and instinctual reaction of violent personal retribution, some sort of compromise must be made where certain things are indeed off limits. I'm not necessarily saying this is the case here, and I'd lean more towards it not being, but it's certainly far from the most worrying recent incident of free speech curbing I've come across lately.
