Houghton, who was also given a five-year restraining order in which she can't see, contact, or even speak about her victim on social networking sites after her detention, sounds like your typical teenage asshole. She started harassing Emily Moore when they were both 14 at school, and continued as time went on. Things got worse after Houghton got on Facebook. The breaking point came when Houghton actually threatened to kill Moore, via her status update:

"Keeley is going to murder the bitch. She is an actress. What a f***ing liberty. Emily F***head Moore."

When authorities questioned her about it, she used the old "I was drunk" excuse. Turns out she wrote it at 4PM, and the status stayed up for 24 hours. Cut to the court scene, when we learn about the character of Houghton, now 18, who showed up to an expected sentencing of community service for the story's unexpected denouement:

Cocky Houghton arrived at court laughing and chatting with about a dozen male and female supporters. But there were gasps and tears from the gaggle when she was sentenced. Unemployed Houghton sobbed as she was taken away to spend three months in a young offenders' institution after admitting harassment.

Even better is the fire-and-brimstone Houghton's sentencing judge, Bruce Morgan, gave her:

"Since Emily Moore was 14 you have waged compelling threats and violent abuse towards her. Bullies are, by their nature, cowards - in school and society. The evil, odious effects of being bullied stay with you for life. On this day you did an act of gratuitous nastiness to satisfy your own twisted nature."

Basically, yes. In the history of precedent for this kind of thing, this is what comes after Elizabeth Thrasher, who was the first person charged with harassment on the internet under a law passed after the Lori Drew incident, in which the mother of a bully caused the suicide of fellow teenager Megan Meier. Thrasher was charged, Drew was indicted, and then had her verdict overturned. Whether or not Houghton will have to serve out her entire sentence is worth wondering. How hard will countries invested in policing things like this enforce these kinds of offenses against others?

Even murkier is the question of what constitutes harassment, which will continue to be cloudy for a while. Is it punishable if you @ someone something terrible on Twitter? Or reblog someone on Tumblr? Or write on a blog?

If anything's clearing up, though, it's the intent of judicial systems who're no longer standing idly by complaints and allegations of this kind of thing. They're going to continue to set precedence in order to define the new frontier of harassment - and the legality of certain communications - from here on out.

The unauthorized-access law has never been cited in a social-networking case, having previously been used by the Justice Department to go after hackers, according to U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien. Most importantly, for all the scare reports in the media of MySpace aiding and abetting crime and other moral backsliding, the Justice Department and the FBI sent a clear message that the company is not liable for the behavior of its users outside the site's stated restrictions. (Photo AP/Tom Gannam)

And while I'm reluctant to accept the Daily Mail's theories about the character or motivations of pretty much anyone with a vagina, it seems disturbingly clear that the problem here is not so much the "glorification of suicide" — which, let's face it, is old as time or at least def. Shakespeare — but the fact that, for the younger generation, the fanatical posing and uploading and friend-collecting and pixelated mirror-staring enabled by Internet "networking" can stunt a kids' development at the age and maturity level at which they first discovered started logging on. As one of the dead kids' moms pointed out:

I think the problem is they do not know how to speak like adults about serious issues like this. They can speak to each other on the computer but do not know how to express their emotions in other ways.

Yeah, I know, I'm fucking old. Which is why I'm going to just say it: can't we fucking BAN MYSPACE, and all its bastard social networking stepchildren, already? What redeeming social value do these sites have?
Pastimes like this make Halo look like the fucking Model U.N.

A Wild Child Surfed Her Way To Suicide And "Virtual Immorality" [Daily Mail]
How Friends Paid Online Tribute To Dead Youngsters [Guardian]

Now, after a criminal investigation that did not result in charges, the Meiers say they plan ligitation. MySpace might be a target. Precedent, however, suggests it might be difficult for the Meiers to win damages from the News Corp property.

Already this year, a judge in Austin dismissed a case against MySpace brought by a minor who alleged she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old she met on the social network. Her lawyers claimed MySpace failed to protect the minor with reasonable safety measures, despite knowing other minors had fallen prey to similar crimes. But the Judge ruled the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which holds that an "interactive computer service" should not be considered a publisher, freed MySpace from the responsibility of policing postings to its site. A similar ruling would clear MySpace from responsibility for the message that drove Megan Meier to suicide.

One case Meiers parents might make is that MySpace doesn't do enough to keep adults from interacting with underage members. But aside from requiring members to register with credit cards, there's little social networks can do to prevent members from lying about their age when signing up.