The New York State Court of Appeals is considering one of the first challenges to the Albany County’s legislature’s 2010 law that make cyberbullying a misdemeanor. The court case stems from an incident involving Marquan W. Mackey-Meggs, a student at Cohoes High School in Cohoes, N.Y., who was arrested in June of 2011 for creating a Facebook page entitled "Cohoes Flame" to which he posted photos of classmates with derogatory and sexual captions. The case sheds new light on the complexity of issues surrounding the cyberbullying debate, and the number of questions it raises—from what exactly defines cyberbullying, to what punitive measures are necessary to combat it, to where exactly the responsibility (and in some cases, the right) to discipline lies. This is just one of many such cases currently being considered.
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