Used to be that home was a safe haven from bullies. Not so since the rise of "cyber bullying."

The family of Megan Meier can testify to that. The Missouri teenager committed suicide after a "boy" she met on the social networking site MySpace rejected her. In fact, there was no such person.

According to investigators, the boy was a persona Lori Drew invented to spy on Megan, who Drew believed was mouthing off about her daughter. Reports say the fake boy told Megan two hours before she hung herself that "the world would be better off without you".

Drew was indicted on federal charges earlier this month, after prosecutors determined she had broken no state laws. She will be tried in California, where the MySpace servers are housed.

It's unfortunate a girl's death was needed to prompt any action, but the heartening news is several states are looking to patch similar holes. Missouri has since made it a crime to harass someone over the Internet, and Illinois legislators followed suit.

Here in Wisconsin, it's already illegal to threaten someone directly via computer, but state Rep. Donald Friske, R-Merrill, is trying to expand that. His bill would make it a misdemeanor to encourage others to harass someone. That could be by posting that person's financial information on a Web page, for example, or by suggesting someone intimidate that person.

Another legislator initiated the effort in response to a domestic dispute in central Wisconsin several years back, and Friske eventually took the torch. He has introduced similar bills the last three sessions but seen them fizzle each time. Most recently, Assembly Bill 51 passed 93-1 but got lost in the Senate.

Typed threats are no less damaging than spoken ones, so we applaud states for giving prosecutors the tools to punish 21st-century offenders. As long as government doesn't take that single tragedy as a license to overreact.

A member of an online safety task force organized by MySpace warned that the interpretation federal prosecutors used to charge Lori Drew could endanger anyone who uses a fake name online. There's no reason to punish people who are simply trying to avoid spam or protect their privacy.

Carefully drawn laws combined with education will hopefully head off other situations like Megan's. Just last year, Racine hosted a training session on spotting and dealing with cyber bullying.

New technology brings new dangers, and it's taken us far too long to log on and delete them.