Shaking the Stick

As the Wanganui schoolgirl beaten until she fell unconscious has not yet returned to school, nearly a month after the vicious attack which was caught on film the head of New Zealand's Secondary Principals Association is calling for filming of bullying to be made a criminal offence, as more and more videos go viral.
With two recent video incidents in the southern hemisphere involving the violent altercations being filmed  and ‘youtubed’ perhaps it is time to look into the possibility of making the recording and sharing of bullying and violence a criminal offence.
The offences need to be defined. There is the physical recording of an incident and there is the ‘sharing’ on youtube, or wherever . We can liken these to possession of narcotics and distribution. But then there is the problem of proving the intent to distribute. With Narcotics it is the volume of product but that magical formula that police and judges know won’t help here.
Charging offenders will be the enacting of a policy ‘after the horse has bolted. Here’s hoping it will prove to be the deterrent we are looking for.
Once material has already been uploaded the control of that material and ‘jurisdication’ would play a role especially with companies based overseas with servers throughout the globe. Can a court order ‘taking down’ of such material? Will the process be swift enough to prevent the video going viral?
A ‘big stick’ approach is what is required but there are far reaching implications in the practical outworking of such a ‘simple’ idea.


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