Bullying (including defamation and illegal threats) is criminal no matter where, when and how it's performed.
If somebody is so stupid they do it on-line with written evidence that's easy to trace back to the author, then the better for the law enforcement.

...any judge foolish enough to even allow a foolish lawsuit like that.

Yes only in Amercia: the same great place that allowed a dog owner to sue a microwave manufacturer because the instructions failed to point out that putting a live animal inside it will result in the death of that animal.

The lady in question routinely dried her dog in her old electric fan oven after shampooing it, when she bought a microwave she used that to dry her dog, which, suprisingly, according to some astonished American onlookers, resulted in the animals demise.

So yes, you can sue for whatever you like in America and some judge somewhere will be dumb enough to uphold it.

Don't put all the blame on the kids. They don't belong on the internet and their parents failed their responsibilities and forgot to teach them some manners and common sense.

Okay, raise your hand if you're a male who made it all the way through high school without being referred to as some form of homosexual. Uh-huh, so that's, um, 0% of the male population.

Unless it was comprised of super-awesomely threatening language they need to throw that part out.

While an icepick might be an efficient means to help cleanse the gene pool, we need to create new jobs building new prisons for the degenerates. Then we can create jobs by maintaining the degenerates in prison. That should help the economy and society. An icepick is a good idea, but it may be too efficient.

So let me get this straight guy-using-the-name-bill-gates, you want to stick an icepick in their heads right?

Since subtlety doesn't work on the internet I'll spell it out: you sound the exact same type.

Might as well get the social degenerates into the slammer as soon as possible. We really need to clean up the gene pool.

The real problem is that all the riff raff of society is allowed on the internet these days where they can put up their inane webpages, blogs, etc. without any kind of effort. There used to be a bar that had to be reached before people could publish things online. Now, with all these social notworking sites, it's just too easy for people to put themselves online where they become easy targets of all the anonymous trolls. You wouldn't post all your private details, your picture, your aspirations, etc. on signposts in a playground, so why would you do it online and expect "protection" from real life?

Maybe all this "cyberbullying" will help people realize that the Internet is not a nice place. When you go out into the world with everyone else, expect to have your "rights" violated, and learn to deal with it. In fact, if this teen wants to become an actor, he's going to need to grow much thicker skin, or he's going to quit at his first-of-many rejections.

@mitchel

I think the death threat part is what happened to sticks and stones.

Whatever happened to sticks and stones?

The defendants should counter-sue the boy for providing a platform for, and hosting, illegal speech.