Because Texas has no laws targeting computer crimes, in the Newby case prosecutors would have to respond to the Internet-related actions with charges of harassment. In the past, such allegations have usually involved stalking or threatening contact by telephone or mail. Harassment at school and in the workplace have historically been defined as behavior that has created a "hostile environment."

The closest offline analogue to a message board -- especially one limited by password or by interest to a group of users in a particular high school community -- is the "slam book" or the bathroom wall. That is, essentially, what the Chappaqua case boils down to: If 14 boys had passed around a black-and-white composition book listing phone numbers and raunchy comments about a list of girls in their class, it might have warranted a trip to the principal's office, but would it warrant a call to the police station? Would it be national news? Would it make the New York Times if "Sheila gives good head" was found written on the bathroom wall of Horace Greeley, or if "Charles is a ho" was written in the girls bathroom at Dalton?

"Any incidents involving the Internet get a disproportionate amount of media attention," says Bennett Hazelton, the webmaster for Peacefire.org, an organization dedicated to supporting the rights of minors online. "If you have a popular cheerleader harassing an unpopular girl in school, the administration would never dream of calling the police."

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Adds Cindy Cohn, spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco: "I don't think in general that there is any difference whether the message is coded in electrons or on dead trees. The only time you could make an argument that different rules would apply to the Internet is if the comments reach a broader audience than they would if they were only on paper -- like, say, someone evaluating a student's application for college. But in general, the people you are most embarrassed to have see a posting on the Internet are the same people who would see it on paper -- that is, your peers."

Says Aaron Caplan, an attorney for the Washington state ACLU: "Even if it reaches a wider audience, your freedom of speech isn't limited to contexts where your speech has little or no impact."

Mike Hiestand of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., agrees that having a password might minimize the damages if, for example, a student tried to sue for libel; but he also points out that the legal definition of libel applies to any published material that more than one person has seen.

If the closest analogue to a message board is a slam book, the closest legal analogue to the Internet is a sidewalk, according to the 1996 Supreme Court ruling in Reno vs. ACLU. According to that decision, the Internet, unlike the public airwaves, which are subject to stricter guidelines, is relatively protected when it comes to free speech. This protection extends to "high school kids saying vulgar, unproductive, socially useless gossip on a Web site," explains Caplan, who has successfully defended several students who were punished by school administrators for publishing what was deemed to be offensive content on off-campus Web sites.

For students enrolled in a public school, explains Caplan, the school is considered a government body and therefore the students are entitled to free speech under the First Amendment. (This protection may not apply to students at private schools, however, because there may be a contract between the school and the parents and students regarding behavior, both on and off campus.)

This right to free speech is not absolute -- the courts have recognized the need of schools to maintain order and an environment conducive to learning and thus allow school administrators to restrict student speech if it represents a material disruption to the learning environment. But, says Caplan, citing the 1969 Supreme Court decision Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which upheld students' rights to wear black armbands to school in symbolic protest of the Vietnam War: "Students don't give up their rights at the schoolhouse gate."

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