'cyber chat room bullies' are being sued

i too can be found most weekdays (VERY early mornings) in an aol chat room. i open it so i have power of the bolt (i can kick people out, but believe it or not, do NOT enjoy it). i don't allow trolling or offensive language (mature talk IS allowed, just not idiocy) or bots. i have seen far too many cyber bullies in my day in other chat rooms. i won't allow it when i open a chat room. we are all to be treated with respect. i have seen threats made, i have seen people go nuts. RELAX, it's the INTERNET. at any rate, mr gillespie could have opened another chat room, OR put his 'tormenters' on ignore (you have both of those capabilities on aol chat). to sue someone is just down right ridiculous. he claims one of the men went to his home and photographed it and posted it on the web. he also claims one of the men posted personal information about him on the web. IF THAT is true, it's another story. that is just downright wrong and could be quite dangerous.

Man sues chatroom pals: I was humiliated beyond what 'no man could endure'
By J.K. Dineen
Court TV Updated Jan. 12, 2006, 11:50 a.m. ET
Mike Marlowe fully admits that he sometimes gave George Gillespie a hard time in that AOL chatroom.
But never in his wildest imagination did he expect to be sued in court for what he characterized as "razzing."
"We gave him crap," said Marlowe, a 33-year-old welder in Fayette, Ala. "I'm not going to deny it. I teased him and he teased me back. He gave it back better than he ever got it."
A generation ago, such petty personal beefs might have been settled with fists outside the corner bar, but now it's the Internet age — and Ohio resident George Gillespie instead filed a $25,000 lawsuit against two erstwhile cyber chums he met in the sprawling 900-room, mostly anonymous society that makes up AOL's chat universe.
Gillespie, 53, claims that Marlowe and Bob Charpentier, a 52-year-old Oregon resident, insulted him and harassed him in the AOL chatroom called "Romance — Older Men" to the point where it inflicted "severe emotional distress and physical injury that is of a nature no reasonable man could be expected to endure it."
The complaint, expected in court on Jan. 31 for a pretrial conference, also names AOL as a defendant for allowing the alleged harassment to take place................