myspace privacy., gone too far? Options

[pandamonium]

a girl posted a blog on myspace from washington township, a school close to mine, on that blog she posted about 17 people she hated and one of those people she said she wanted to kill. They arrested her as soon as someone saw this blog. But she went away with a warning and won't be attending school for a while.

Do you think it is right they arrested her? I mean there are probably several other people who right on their diaries or journals (online or not) about what happened in the day and say they wanna kill someone but aren't as serious. Do you think they took this too far by arresting?

(ps - I didnt know whether this was serious enough to go to debate, so move it if it is. )

[*mipadi*]

Most time when students say things like "I want to kill so-and-so", they don't really mean it. The problem is, as recent school shootings have shown, in a tiny number of circumstances the person really means it. This creates a problem for the authorities: If they know about a death threat, even a joke, and do nothing about it, and the person carries through on the threat, can they be held responsible? You can bet the parents of the victim would likely bring such a case to civil court. We live in a society where no one has personal responsibility anymore. A death isn't the fault of the killer; it's the fault of the killer, the media, the authorities for not doing more to stop it, and so forth. Arresting people for these sorts of charges is just a cover-my-ass move by those in control.

Do I think a person should be arrested every time they make such a (likely idle) threat? In an ideal society, no. But we hardly live in an ideal society. I don't have tons of sympathy for people who post things like that online, because by now, they should know better. I'm always quite careful about what I say about people online no matter what the context.