is a columnist

for the Kansas City Star

The outrage is unrelenting and understandable - but at this point unnecessary.

In October 2006, a 13-year-old St. Louis-area girl hanged herself in her bedroom closet after her heart was broken by an online crush. It's a horrible story, but one we would never have heard about but for one fact: The girl, Megan Meier, was the victim of an Internet hoax. "Josh," the boy who captured her attention through messages on MySpace, never existed. He was the fabrication of a neighbor.

In a further twist - and here's the reason this story has stoked a nationwide vigilante campaign - the meddling neighbor was the mother of another teenage girl. That teenager lived down the street and once had been a close friend of Megan's.

Remember that: The crux of this sad story is a soured friendship between two young girls.

It took more than a year for the scheming behind Megan's suicide to become public. Once it hit the news, people reacted in two basic ways. Some cried, "There ought to be a law." Prosecutors in Missouri have searched in vain for a way to charge the mother with a crime, and a state task force is attempting to get new legislation passed that might apply to future cases. Los Angeles prosecutors are considering charging the mother with defrauding MySpace.

But the eventual conclusion likely will be that the law can't do much about the tragedy of Megan. The incident is yet another example of the country's laws not keeping in step with fast-paced technology. MySpace did not exist until 1999. Today, it has about 100 million users, and at least some of them are creepy adults trolling for children to chat up, or worse.

As lawmakers and prosecutors searched for a way to respond, others resorted to one of the oldest conceptions of justice. Cyber vigilantes identified the offending mother as Lori Drew and publicized her home address, phone number and e-mail accounts in e-mail and on the Web.

They learned of her advertising business and began soliciting others to harass her clients. Soon, lots of people were proving they could be just as juvenile and cunning in their cruelty as Drew had been.

Now, Drew's daughter is in hiding and the entire family is subject to vandalism, threats and ostracism.

It is no doubt tempting for crusading lawmakers and cyber vigilantes alike to feel satisfaction that they have accomplished something after this monstrous crime.

And yet, once this story is unraveled, its moral is not so clear. Now the villains include lots of angry adults behaving badly, and children being rude.

Megan suffered from depression and was on antidepressant medication. Lori Drew knew this. But she had no way of knowing that Megan would commit suicide.

The two girls once were friends. Megan even went on vacations with the Drew family. The girls got into trouble once, for - get this - creating a false MySpace page. Then the teens had a falling out.

The Internet allows for trafficking in the oldest of human faults, providing a seemingly credible pathway for gossip and lies to take hold in people's lives. Yet society cannot legislate against every possible evil that might befall a child.

Indeed, Missouri's proposed cyber-harassment legislation, had it been law before Megan committed suicide, possibly would not have applied to Lori Drew's conduct. And, ironically, the suburb where the Meiers and the Drews live has passed an ordinance making cyber harassment a misdemeanor. The result so far: The new law could be used to protect Drew from her tormentors.

Is there really a need for new laws here? Or do we just need to be better parents to our own - and other people's - children?