Angry in the Great White North

In Ottawa, a video of students fighting was posted on the internet:

Two teenaged boys were suspended from an Ottawa high school for a fight that was seen on the internet by more than 1,000 people, including their vice-principal.

Barry Armstrong, vice-principal of Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School, suspended two students for two days and got details of last Wednesday's incident by watching it on YouTube.

He's among an increasing number of people - including police and crime victims - who are counting on YouTube to reveal transgressions of criminals and kids.

Armstrong said Monday that he checks internet sites such as YouTube at least once a week for public displays of bad behaviour by his students.

He added he still plans to find and suspend the student who filmed the video with a camera phone and posted it on YouTube.

Now why would the student who filmed the video be suspended? Because he didn't report the incident himself? Possibly. Because he embarrassed the school? Maybe.

Armstrong is careful to suggest nothing more than this:

Armstrong said he doesn't think students realize the consequences of posting anything on the internet.

"And without exception they seem to miss that link - that it's in perpetuity - that it lasts and it may be embarrassing for them down the road and certainly for the school in the short term."

Or was there more? A deeper reason for wanting to go after the student who filmed the fight? Could it be that the student filming and one of the students in the fight were working in concert? The scrapper picks a fight, and the budding Spielberg records the fight with the intention of posting the video online. The other student in the fight is a victim of manipulation by a pair shooting what is called a "happy slapping" video.

Yeah, I know. What?

It's all the rage in Europe:

Several years ago, the United Kingdom noticed a disturbing pastime among a segment of its youths - "happy slapping". Individuals or groups found amusing the slapping or striking of strangers while accomplices filmed the assaults using mobile phones. The images were later showcased on the Internet. In recent years, the "happy slapping" virus has spread into France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland, among other European countries. And governments have had enough of this cruel and sometimes lethal form of entertainment.

Happy slapping has often been anything but happy, and has gone far beyond slapping:

In the UK, hundreds of "happy slapping" incidents have been reported, including the case of a 37-year-old terrorism survivor who was brutally attacked by a gang on a "happy slapping" rampage, while sitting with friends in a pub. He later died from his injuries. In Spain, a friend of upper middle-class youths, who killed a homeless woman in a Barcelona ATM, says they had previously shown others aggressions against homeless individuals, recorded on mobile phones. Parents of children at a posh Madrid school were shocked when the national news aired mobile-phone video of a kid being repeatedly beaten by classmates. In France, school-aged youths took and distributed photos of classmates engaged in a gang rape in the southeastern city of Nice and clashes with police during recent banlieue riots.

The spread of happy slapping has prompted crackdowns. Some of the efforts have been labelled as clumsy:

The United Kingdom and Spain have sentenced individuals to prison for assaults that have ended in deaths. Italy investigated an Internet company that hosted a "happy slapping" video. And France recently approved a law enabling courts to sentence individuals, other than professional journalists, who film and distribute violent images online to up to five years in prison and € 75,000 in fines. The French law has been criticized by organizations that seek to protect freedom of expression, claiming it will prevent citizens from denouncing police brutality. French government officials have emphasized the amendment has been adopted to simply counteract the "happy slapping" practice. Countries have also banned mobile phones from schools and taken anti-bullying measures.

Bloggers are especially worried about the French law being taken up in other countries, since "violent images" are the staple of news.

In Canada, happy slapping, with all the potential consequences, doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar yet.

Even this incident might not have been one of happy slapping, but just an example of a student with a cell phone camera at the right place at the right time.

Maybe. But it has all the hallmarks of a happy slapping setup. The school board has recognized that these fights are often staged:

Although vice-principal Barry Anderson declined comment last night, an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board spokeswoman said Mr. Armstrong told her he regularly checks YouTube, a popular video-sharing site, for bad behaviour among the students at his school.

"I know (Mr. Armstrong) checks YouTube on a regular basis, so that students know that he is aware and if he finds something, there will be consequences," Sharlene Hunter said.

She also said students who shoot the video also compound the problem.

"A lot of these things on YouTube start out as staged events and then what happens is emotions get involved and they escalate. And some of that violence has been quite severe," she said.

Hunter seems to think the fight was an unintended consequence. In a happy slapping video, it is the goal. Again, Canadians are dancing around the issue.

If Armstrong is finding these kinds of videos on a regular basis, then I'm willing to bet many of them are happy slapping videos. Perhaps most of them.

If happy slapping has come to Canada, school administrators and police had better ramp up quickly on understanding the phenomenon, and recognize just how far this has gone in Europe. But most importantly, the media ought to explain the situation, in reference to the growing number of incidents in Canada, so that parents can understand the potential for misuse that exists by putting this sort of technology in the hands of immature children and teens.

Example videos:

This one is literally "happy slapping" -- a giggly girl running past her classmates and smacking their bottoms:

This seems to be a random smack on the head on a bus:

Videos that escalate are harder to find. Many have been removed by video sharing services like YouTube. In some particularly violent cases, the videos are shared directly from camera to camera. In any case, we can see stills that have been used in news reports to get a taste of how vicious these incidents have become: