Harassment

Harassment refers to anyone who receives contact, either physical, vocal, photographic or written, by someone that they do not want. Legally, the definition requires that the culprit is aware that they are doing it, has been asked to stop, and that they do not have a legitimate legal reason to contact them.

Open definition of harassment

Harassment is defined as anyone who feels harassed.

A person who is harassed only needs to feel harassed, in other words to feel that the contact is unwanted. The unwanted contact need not be deliberately harmful or have any nasty intention. It could be a friend calling another friend to ask how they are.

Since the definition is so open, obviously it is incredibly easy to lie about harassment. People can claim to be harassed so as to get an advantage in a situation.

Legal definition of harassment

Different jurisdictions have different definitions of harassment, so as to attempt to remove ambiguity of the law. Nonetheless, no legal definition in any jurisdiction removes that ambiguity. No harassment law can prevent the possibility of abuse. For this reason, many jurisdictions do not criminalise harassment at all. Harassment is a very grey area, a very abused law, and a very controversial law, as are all laws related to harassment, including stalking and cyber stalking. Primarily, the issue is the use of opinions and feelings and the absence of evidence required. At the same time, however, harassment is considered to be very serious.

Generally speaking, the following is a reasonable legal definition of harassment:

Harassment occurs whenever a victim feels that they are received contact, through physical, vocal, photographic or written means, that they do not wish to receive, have clearly expressed in an unambiguous manner that they do not wish this contact to continue, the culprit has expressed an understanding that that is their wish, and have continued to make the same kind of contact. Further, harassment is prosecutable only when there is a real physical or mental danger to the victim.

As stated above, this definition may differ for different jurisdictions.

Criminal prosecution of harassment

In most jurisdictions, harassment in itself is not prosecutable; however it can lead to various orders, as with stalking, named variously as restraining orders, apprehended violence orders and many other names, the breaking of which can lead to imprisonment. Harassment, if it is sexual in nature, can in some jurisdictions be prosecuted as sexual harassment. Primarily, however, harassment is prosecutable through industrial relations laws and is almost universally grounds for dismissal.

Harassment on the internet

On most internet sites, harassment is dealt with very harshly, and most programs that are used to connect people to the internet have a very simple way to ignore someone. All instant messenger services come with ignore buttons, as do most chat sites, most MUDs, MySpace, most blogs, Newsgroups, MMORPGs and basically most places on the internet. Web forums in some cases do not have ignore buttons - for example Wikipedia Review currently does not have an ignore button. Wikipedia also is an exception, that does not have an ignore button.

On places that do not have ignore buttons, harassment can be a difficult issue, as internet sites can be faced with the issue of possibly banning someone who isn't meaning to do anything wrong or else have other people feel harassed and not want to be there.