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Woman Indicted In MySpace Suicide Case
longacre writes "The Associated Press is reporting an indictment has been handed down in the sad case of Megan Meier, the girl who committed suicide after receiving upsetting MySpace messages from someone she perceived to be her boyfriend. It was later determined the boy, Josh Evans, was a fictitious identity created by a neighbor of Meier's family. Lori Drew, of a St. Louis suburb, has been charged with 'one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.' Interestingly, despite the alleged crime having occurred strictly in Missouri, the case was investigated by the FBI's St. Louis and Los Angeles field offices, and the trial will be held in Los Angeles, home of MySpace's servers. Wired is running a related story about the potentially 'scary' precedent this case could set."
If you can get punished for inflicting emotional distress, I guess Vista really was illegal...
I hate to come across as a "heartless" bastard, but jumping off a bridge (or the equivalent) due to some perceived online relationship failure just doesn't seem right.
Then again, maybe kids today are far too sensitive.
Really I do not think theres anything scary about what will happen in this case. An adult should be semi responsible for there actions.
How can an adult feel like toying with a young girl with an over self conscious image of herself when they live near them?
I can understand that there could be other circumestances when this could be scary but in this case i thought it was just HORRID what the person did.
Mod me a troll if you want. But i think most people when they read this case realize that what that person did was wrong. And i believe that in most circumstances driving someone to suicide is a crime. I don't care if you say that the person was to emotional, thats a reason that you should be semi understanding and not go out of your way to mess with them.
She had severe depression. If it wasn't this trigger it would have been another. Simply signing up for myspace and logging in for the first time could have been a major contributing factor.
Or is there something I'm not getting here?
She was 13... what 13 year old girl (or boy for that matter) doesn't have emotional issues?
Thats a very unstable and impressionable stage, where shit like the pencil you use in school seems important.
If the case was another 13 year old, I would be rather dissapointed that the charges stuck... however she was/is 49 years old, preying on a 13 year old... thats, just flatout fucking bullshit.
For once, an accurate first post. "Inflicting emotional distress" should not be a crime, because that means "insulting someone on Usenet" is a crime. Not only would we lose half the world's geeks within a year, but we'd have disgraced our legal system forever.
If you really feel "emotional distress", you can take the traditional response - a duel, either with swords a la D'argtanan or with pistols a la Jefferson or with words a la Usenet. It's entered into by mutual agreement, which means no one gets anything they weren't willing to get. You can walk away from an insult or even a duel - you can't walk away from a lawsuit. My two cents (that's all I have, I'm not allowed to vote, those under 18 being clear idiots by definition) says that taking this into the courts is an insult to both parties. It's a private matter, and it should be settled privately.
Sure, the girl committed suicide, so there's an emotional investment here on the part of the people hearing about the case, but people should be able to realize just what kind of precedent they're setting here. It's not a good one.
If the perp had have been a man, he would have been arrested. More importantly, we're not talking about a 13 year old harassing another 13 year old, we're talking about a 40-odd year old woman who knew the victim deliberately crafting a fake persona and instigating it into her life. Knowing that the target - a child - had mental issues, this deranged pathetic excuse for a human being nevertheless persisted in her campaign to deceive the child, involving as many of her own daughter's friends as possible.
This is one of the most twisted things I have heard, and your logic echoes that of the sociopathic, fat, middle aged woman who felt the need to do this "I don't feel bad about this because she had issues with depression".
The woman deserves what is coming, and I will laugh happily every time I hear her family has suffered misfortune - losing their business, pulling their daughter from school and hopefully soon being forced from the community. She acted without remorse and deserves to suffer consequences.
Here in Italy, inducing someone to suicide is a crime. There is no such law in U.S.A. ?
If my reading is correct, it is all 'alleged' at this point. I'm sure I read that she denied it; yes, this is what it says :
"Drew has denied creating the account or sending messages to Megan"
I'll be interested in what happens in 'court' or whatever the next step is (I don't understand the US legalese, eg "Indicted").
Max.
Perhaps she thought that young girls should not invest their emotions in people they meet over instant messenger or on social networking sites and wanted to teach her a lesson. Maybe she was afraid that a predator was going to get this young girl and thought it better to drive her away from this dangerous activity before she got seriously hurt. Clearly her parents were absent from the equation and maybe this woman wanted to teach *them* a lesson.
Maybe if this generation of kids were not such cry-baby emos she would have taken her lumps and learn from the experience instead of offing herself over something so trivial as an internet boyfriend.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Am I missing something?
Everyone's talking about it like she's been found guilty already. Has the case been judged on already and I missed it?
Max.
Of course it's all "alleged". Until such time as the person is convicted, any reasonable news outlet will use the word "alleged" as a CYA measure against libel charges.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
So, it's ok to assume she's guilty?
What's the point in indicting her then? Why not just do an old-fashioned lynching?
Max.
What the hell are you talking about? I cannot find any link between your post and mine, which makes me wonder why you posted it as a reply to mine.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
OK. Fair enough. I apologise.
I read 'into' your post stuff you didn't write - ie that the *only reason* for putting 'alleged' is for the paper to avoid libel charges.
Of course this isn't the case. The term 'alleged' actually means something, and that is that she hasn't been found guilty yet. It seems that the majority (all? apart from mine) of posts here have assumed she's guilty already.
She does actually deny the charges, if I read it correctly. People don't seem to consider that she's telling the truth.
Max.
Would the situation be any different if it weren't a hoax?
What if Josh Evans really existed, and was true to what was spoken? Because then it would be a freedom of speech issue.
You make a fine point and I agree with you. I'm pretty sure that the possibility of libel charges is a big reason why news organizations use "alleged", but sometimes the result of CYA actions is something that's actually good, and I think this is one of those cases. Noble results from selfish actions.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I haven't figured that out yet. IS this a free speech issue, or was this conspiracy to harm someone. She clearly conspired to harm someone, but should she be punished, or should it be tolerated to protect free speech.
On the other hand, they might have her on misusing a computer. She did violate the TOS.
What if you off yourself? No thanks, I'll stay the heck away from calling you -anything- after this indictment decision.
And yes, I fully realize that what happened in the article's case is far more severe than calling a person a troll on Slashdot.
On the other hand, the girl also didn't go through the steps of blocking the user, reporting the user to MySpace or going to court to get the equivalent of a restraining order (as a sibling poster pointed out, we have such things for stalkers.. but you do still need to take action yourself to get one). My sympathies to the family and loved ones, my disgust unto the women (sorry, Ms. Grills, but I don't think you should get away from this relatively unscathed) who drove the girl to see only one solution to this, and my middle finger to MySpace for not doing much in the way of anything to educate their users that there -are- many, many options of dealing with this including legal routes. To be named a victim in this case must bring a very unpleasant and awkward feeling in the gut of the powers-that-be there.
Back to my point... -I- don't know what might send a user over the edge, so no troll mod for you.
It's a terrible story, but it still should be treated a civil case. A criminal prosecution because someone put up a fake myspace profile is ridiculous. You could indite half of slashdot with that precedent.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Except half of slashdot didn't create the profiles to terrorize a little girl and cause her to kill herself. In this specific case, a life was lost because of the actions of this woman.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Don't forget that the woman also asked the parents of the victim to store a Christmas (or was it a Birthday?) present in their garage during all this.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
I think people here might be missing the logic behind this.
The "victim" for the computer trespass crime is MySpace, not the girl or her family.
MySpace suffered no financial losses because of this, so this is a highly dubious criminal charge. The family, on the other hand, has a legitimate case which they should take to the civil courts.
(Obviously the base instinct is "get 'em!", but Slashdot should be more perspective about computer crimes.)
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
"Get her (woman) any way you can" There is no legal means for prosecuting someone for what she did to the girl, so they found another way to bring charges, i.e. being arrested for resisting arrest or the way Gotti caused the deaths of dozens, but he went away for tax evasion. What she did was not acceptable socially, so the criminal justice system is trying to find a way to squeeze her in. I don't like it, but right now I think its better than having US Code specifying the legality of things like this on the Internet more than it already does. Considering the 80% of congress is technically inept (optimistic) and a different 80% could care less about passing ambigous legislation that can be misused.
Not to be a jerk, but don't you have to be 14 to use myspace?
stuff |
Yes, but her daughter should not be another victim of this woman's missteps.
The issue here is that prosecutors are using the typical shotgun approach, and firing a bunch of charges at her to see what will stick.
Technology has nothing to do with this crime, and there could be negative ramifications if she is indeed found guilty of federal communication charges for a local crime.
Let's pretend this occurred 30 years ago, and instead of using the internet as the backdrop, the woman and girl simply exchanged letters as local pen-pals. The woman would photocopy the girl's letters, and circulate them around the community, demeaning and belittling the girl. The girl finally finds out, and commits suicide over the humiliation and emotional distress.
So what's the difference here? Society at large demands punishment for this woman, as she acted intentionally to harm the girl emotionally and humiliate her publicly. Whether she did so using sign language, morse code, hand written letters or the internet is irrelevant.
Better known as 318230.
This reminded me, for those of us old enough to remember, of the Judas Priest suicide trial. I know that was a civil case but, in summary, Judas Priest was sued for allegedly putting a submlimial 'do it' message in the song 'Better By You, Better Than Me' triggered James Vance to commit suicide. Judas Priest was acquitted. Not exactly the same situation but along the same concept. Even if Judas Priest did put a 'do it' message in their song, why would they be responsible for the death or any unstable person that kill themselves after listening to it?
Were the Beatles responsible for Charles Manson?
In any event, this is barely a civil matter much less a criminal one.
This is the reason I developed a program for my kids as well as yours. It's call Browser Lock and it prevents kids from getting on the Internet via a Browser without a parental password. You can download a copy at TheProDevDotCom, then click Browser Lock. Hope it helps saves kids out there.
It falls on the parents until the kid is 18! to be involved in their kid's life and be supportive should anything like this happen, as well as also be not so judgmental, as this would push the kid away from explaining their troubles.
As a parent, I would have first off felt obliged to explain that life does not revolve around some stupid little boy (fictitious or not), then explain that she was the queen of her castle, and that she should stand up to life no matter what it brings her, then finally also go to see this boy's parents about this online abuse, where this would lead to the discovery this boy didn't exist!
you insensitive clod
So what's the difference here?
The difference is that the post office doesn't make you press a button on the mailbox to show you agree with a "terms of use" form lacquered to the side of the box, and there are no laws that pressing a physical button obligates you to abide by any terms. There are laws about what constitutes postal fraud, but random postal services companies don't get to set them up and have them be treated as legally binding on people who just push a button.
There's a whole bunch of bad laws that have built up around computers and online services, and this is an example of why they're bad... because this case has the potential for establishing a whole new world of opportunities for lawyers and prosecutors to hurt people who are far less culpable than Lori Drew, while providing no real handle to deal with serious abuse.
I have run into cases online where people who have deliberately engaged in long-term wide-scale bullying on the Internet. Some of them are well known and well respected members of the research community, people at major institutions who have written standard textbooks. Others are merely online personalities who restrict themselves to attacking people on political or religious grounds. Their victims have in some cases lost their jobs, and there have been rumors of suicides.
These are not naive people playing a cruel joke on someone they know, there's no connection between them and their victims, they may not even be in the same country as their targets, and they feel no remorse for their actions... they've played the same game over and over again, and even boasted about it where they feel safe to do so.
And no amount of playing games with EULAs will stop them. All it will do is create more opportunities for abusive prosecutions and lawsuits.
I had an ad online looking for a roomate. My ex, who knew the site I posted on, crafted up a fake persona on the roommate site, and answered my ad. As the room was taken, she then proceeded to chat me up using the fake identity and the knowledge of my personal interests etc.
After stringing it along for awhile, she indicated that she "wouldn't be moving so soon after all", but invited me to a fairly cool party in a city several hours away (Victoria).
I was suspicious, though I didn't suspect my ex , but rather thought that perhaps some friends that I knew to be in Victoria were planning a joke. I was bored, so I decided to check it out. I half-expected to arrive and find all my buddies waiting for a big "surprise", and half expected that perhaps there was a real party. Turned out the address itself was bogus (darn you mapquest, you said it existed) and a waste of time.
So then I traced the IP's on the email back to the wireless of the local college, which gave me some suspicions of the sender. I managed to determine that the password on the sender's hotmail account was my ex's birthday.
So my point? Well, it's pretty freaky to know that somebody will go to *that* much trouble to mess with you, even when you're an adult. As a techie type of guy, I've regularly met friends from both online and off, but it's put a pretty big damper on my trust of those online. It's one thing to know that when you meet a person they might be a little exaggerated in personal details, and another to realize you've befriended somebody who's just a troll created to get into your head.
My story ended (I hope), when I talked to the police. They weren't actually able to do much about the whole internet thing (though it seems like stalking to me), but they were able to deal with the fact that she was calling me about 15-20x in an hour, and often masking her phone # from my call display. The threat of criminal harassment charges and deportation (she was a student from overseas) tuned her down a bit, and I moved from that city not that long after.
This girl's story ended when she got too attached to her stalker, and was given a directive to end her own life. Was she too impressionable? Perhaps. It seems like it's fairly easily a case of stalking/harassment to me. Throw in the age and I'm sure that other things crop up.
As mentioned elsewhere, if this were an adult male and a young woman, they'd most likely have gone after this even more heavily.
I don't agree with trumped-up charges, but what happens when there are many things that are a half-fit, but don't quite match the modern world? The problem is that laws don't always keep up with technology, and unfortunately the technology is not well understood (which leads to vague and easily abused laws). Perhaps there needs to be a meter that distinguishes minor online "harassment" such a posting insults on usenet from creating a fake identity to target and damage a specific person.
Nowadays I think that the best meter for that is still the same as before. A judge, and/or a jury. Unfortunately, they're both (especially a jury) still influenced strongly by emotion and doublespeak, but the justice system is still one of our best ways of making a strong impression about what is not acceptable in today's society.
I'm an adult, I can deal with this shit. A 13-year-old girl, already an outcast, could use a little help or protection.
it may help prevent vigilante justice...
If it were my kid it happened to and the law said tough darts, that woman would not be coming home for dinner.
So then trolling repeatedly could count against in the three-strikes law?
Why not put all that hate-filled energy into positive steps, like helping out a suicide hotline or pushing for legislation they feel would prevent this in the future?
The people who attack her family are doing evil, plain and simple. I hope they get sent to jail for it.
I think it's age 13 and up; children below that age appear to be legally protected against (m)any sorts of non-governmental privacy invation. I don't know the exact legal basis, but along with many other services the Windows version of Adobe Flash gathers a lot more information for people 13 and over.
wired article on this says it's up to 20 years...that's wrong... it's up to 20 years for each of the 4 counts against here.. up to a max of 80 years. They should throw the book at her. Speaking as someone who has been harassed on other online form of communication, it would set a good example for others to look to. Yes, that's a lot of years, but that little girl isn't going to get up again... which really sucks. People don't use their manners online and it's starting to go out in to the real world with cell phones and junk.... People that do crap like this need to be set straight because it's not right. Yes, you do have free speech but there can and should be limits to that.
an indictment means that a Grand Jury has weighed all the evidence and decided that there is enough of it to cause any reasonable person to believe that a crime has in fact been committed. Rules of evidence are much more lax and guilt or non-guilt is not the issue -- only whether a crime has been committed.
The Grand Jury then issues an indictment, which are the formal charges which will be presented to the criminal court, in which arguments will be weighed by a Petite Jury who decides if the individual in question did the shit that the Grand Jury said happened.
My knowledge of the British legal system comes from watching Poirot and a few episodes of Murphy's Law, but I think its roughly analogous to a Coroner's Inquest in the UK, where they decided if in fact a it was a murder before they decide who actually gets charged with the crime.
So, you fully support putting people in jail for violating "terms of service" agreements (essentially, an EULA)?
Dangerous DANGEROUS precedent to make yourself feel better about a depressed kid doing the inevitable
Causality does not imply responsibility. Maybe hundred thousands died in Burma because I yawned a month ago. That doesn't make me responsible.
Alternatively I could ask the cab tomorrow : "make a right after all". And bam, he'll hit someone. My opening my mouth to give direction belongs in a causal chain leading to this death. It doesn't make me responsible.
Responsibility comes when the action you did was intrinsically a crime (regardless of the consequences).
\u262D = \u5350
The article (and others) suggests that is was more like the parent creates a fake profile to spy on the victim to see "What the girl might be saying online", and at some point, for some reason, decided to "have some fun" - if she did it was grossly stupid. IMHO parents generally should stay out of teen social entanglements.
But I have to agree, it's a civil case, not a social one.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
And you also wrote: It seems that the majority (all? apart from mine) of posts here have assumed she's guilty already. It seems to me that people just want the courts to decide if she is guilty.
OK, I think.
Well, I have to apologise to everyone here. Even if you are all wrong to assume the woman is guilty, it is entirely reasonable to do so (IMO) considering the complexity of the whole thing.
Max.
"The woman deserves what is coming, and I will laugh happily every time I hear her family has suffered misfortune - losing their business, pulling their daughter from school and hopefully soon being forced from the community. She acted without remorse and deserves to suffer consequences."
Her family will be lucky if she isn't found dead in an alley.
One of the reasons this crime is so shocking is that, not too long ago, the consequences would have involved death at the hands of the dead girl's family. I don't know whether to be sad or glad at the fact that this hasn't happened yet.
I'm reminded of a story a coworker tells of an uncle of his who was a preacher. He was the consummate Southern gentleman (as is my coworker), but tells the story of a parishioner of his. It was well known that her husband was a drunkard and beat her regularly, and after a long time she came to the pastor for advise (note - NOT the law). These were the instructions he gave her:
1) When he goes out Saturday night, get a bedsheet and wet it until soaking. Wait.
2) When he comes home, wait until he passes out and then wrap him as tightly as she can in the sheet. This will immobilize him.
3) Beat him. He will wake up and threaten you - beat him until unconscious. He will plead with you - keep beating him. If he tries to get out of the sheet, beat him until he stops. Beat him until he swears never to touch alcohol again or raise his hand in anger, and you believe it - if he sounds insincere, keep beating.
4) If you get scared or are unsure of what you are doing, call me and I'll come over and pray with you for the guidance to do what you need to do.
Apparently, it worked - next Sunday they showed up in church, her looking tired and him meek and covered in bruises, but by all reports he never drank or hit her again. Which raises the question - if we can take care of ourselves and our families with some help from our community, why does the State wish to stop that?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
You are correct. They did get Gotti on Tax Evasion too, which I am sure further my confusion...
I would agree if it was a simple "terms of service" violation. Someone is dead over this. Parents lost their child. Yes she took her own life, but to say this woman had no other involvment than a violation of terms of service is quite inaccurate. How do you know it was inevitable? Some people suffer with depression in their teen years. It's pretty common actually. If the 40 year old woman hadn't pushed her over the edge by deliberately tormenting her perhaps the girl might have gone on to live a full a vibrant life. I don't fully support putting people in jail for simply violating a EULA, but she did much more than that, and I fully support putting her in jail. The other kid that sent the message saying "the world would be a better place without you" deserves a fair amount of accountability as well. Actions have consequences, and I think it's a far worse precident to set by suggesting otherwise. I was saddened by this at the start, and it's not going to make me feel any better about it putting her behind bars, but it might at least send a message. Just because you're somewhat anonymous on the Internet doesn't give you the right to go about ruining peoples lives.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
A ticking birthday present? >:]
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Your point being?
Max.
Dangerous DANGEROUS precedent to make yourself feel better about a depressed kid doing the inevitable Maybe. If it was a bank account or an eBay account and not a MySpace account I'm sure people may feel differently. In the former cases it is not so much the violation of the "terms of service" that causes the harm, but what exactly the violation is and how it effects people.
Perhaps this woman should be charged with 'child abuse', as "Child abuse is the physical, psychological or sexual maltreatment of children." (Ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse). If this woman (or more likely if it was a man) was sexually enticing this girl then 'child abuse' charges would likely be filed. It is sad when people put such little emphasis on psychological abuse (of other people, and especially children) though I've always found much hypocrisy when it happens to themselves.
She was 13... what 13 year old girl (or boy for that matter) doesn't have emotional issues?
That's the problem with politically correct euphemisms; they are inaccurate, often to the point of fiction. By "emotional issues" he means "batshit crazy".
All thirteen year olds have emotional issues, but nobody kills themselves unless they're batshit crazy, even if they are an emotionally unstable 13.
The sad thing is, there are some very effective drugs and other therapies these days to treat those particular form of batshit craziness, but our society sees mental illnesses not as treatable diseases but as some sort of moral deficiency. The crazy person doesn't want to be crazy any more than a cancer patient wants cancer, but he or she is just as powerless to "just get over it" as a cancer patient is.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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The question that I would like to ask is, if the allegations made against her are indeed true, is Lori Drew is fit to be a parent?
becomes a criminal act, then all private private companies must be considered as government agents, with all the constitutional restrictions that apply to the government itself. So, for example, no censorship is permitted, no snooping into employees computers by their boss without a warrant signed by a judge, etc. It is important that this case goes nowhere fast.
What?
in the thread, from a high id no less. Congrats!
--The woman deserves what is coming, and I will laugh happily every time I hear her family has suffered misfortune - losing their business, pulling their daughter from school and hopefully soon being forced from the community. She acted without remorse and deserves to suffer consequences.--
I'm not a big fan of mob justice. Not patronizing a business because you disagree with the owner is fine. Death threats, assault, and other violent and criminal activities have no place here. Causing more unhappiness certainly doesn't improve their community.
Why not put all that hate-filled energy into positive steps, like helping out a suicide hotline or pushing for legislation they feel would prevent this in the future?
The people who attack her family are doing evil, plain and simple. I hope they get sent to jail for it.
Where do you see anything about attacking her family, or "doing evil" to her? Not to mention "mob justice". The GP simply said the woman deserves what she gets, whether that is losing her business (I read it as losing from financial burden of a criminal/civil defense lawyer) or whatever.
You read an awful lot into what the GP said.
I agree with your general sentiment, I just think your comment was triggered from the wrong post.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
The charges brought against her are for a Terms of Service violation, which is being claimed falls under anti-hacking laws.
It doesn't matter to me what the back story is, what matters is the binding precedent that could be set, making it a criminal offense to sign up to a web service with anonymous or false credentials.
Take it out of the Internet. A grown-up woman tormented a 13 year old child until she committed suicide. Shouldn't this be severely punished?
MySpace was the means for it, nothing else. The bottom line is simply what was done and the consequences. This whole case shouldn't be judged with focus on the Internet but on the case itself.
I remember the first time i saw this, some six or seven months ago, I guess. At the time, I remember her saying, (paraphrased)"yes, I did create the account to find out about the people that were picking on my child." So..., screw alleged. If my memory serves, and it invariably does, bitch is guilty, fry her.
77 HITS
Really Long Off Topic Combo
Which raises the question - if we can take care of ourselves and our families with some help from our community, why does the State wish to stop that?
Because, like it or not, the woman in your example was no better beating her husband than he was beating her. It may have worked, but more often than not, it doesn't. I know people who've been hospitalized for shit like that. I know of (second hand) multiple people who've been killed for shit like that. Either the husband died or the wife died because she tried to "fight" back.
Giving bad advice that works out okay isn't acceptable. What the pastor should have told her was "get out of the house--take the children (if applicable) and call the cops." Anything else was negligence on his part.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
And your deriving pleasure from that girl's suffering is different than the woman you condemn because....?
And I've stated: It seems to me that people just want the courts to decide if she is guilty. The point is that people (in my opinion) are not assuming she is guilty, but rather want justice for an apparent crime that has 'allegedly' happened. In other words I believe that people would rather have the woman brought before the courts to have a fair trial of her guilt or innocence. Merely wanting a person charged with a crime does not necessarily imply prejudice (but wanting that person charged and convicted without a fair trial would).
Regards,
UTW
1.Its clear case of fake identity to scam the kid.
2.This was planned for months in advance.
3.The psychological value of online friends and the whole argument about "internet isn't real" is as bogus as claiming TV,letters,phones or radio aren't real.
Its not easy to comprehend(especially for Slashdot) but todays internet is what glues many people together.As online social networks show it is pervasive and stronger then any previous communication methods we invented.
Just thinks for a moment how 'real-life friends' communicate betwen each other: they use phones,write letters,meet at public.The internet abstractizes and simplifies the whole process.
If this 'scary' thing really does attach, would it be THAT great a legal leap to say that buying gold (against such a game's TOS) is likewise hacking, in the same manner?
Seems like it to me.
I think the charges are wrong, but I also think that charges are necessary in a case like this, for exactly the reason you stated: "What 13 year old doesn't have emotional issues".
Alternatively I could ask the cab tomorrow : "make a right after all". And bam, he'll hit someone. My opening my mouth to give direction belongs in a causal chain leading to this death. It doesn't make me responsible.
Responsibility comes when the action you did was intrinsically a crime (regardless of the consequences). This woman, under a fake screen persona, "allegedly" told this little girl that the world would be a better place without her. In other words, "Kill yourself", which is exactly what the girl did. I think that makes her at least somewhat responsible.
As for the rest of, unfortunately, there no law against being a C**T! However, there may be something they can do about her being a C**T to a 13-yr-old girl.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I'm afraid you don't quite understand how the legal system works. While yes, the circumstances around this case involve the death of a child, the actual case is with regard to whether or not the woman broke the ToS. That's what's being decided on here. And hence, that's why this is such a dangerous precedent.
Because, like it or not, the woman in your example was no better beating her husband than he was beating her. It may have worked, but more often than not, it doesn't.
The larger truth is that, if the husband is coming drunk all the time and beating his wife, he is a no-account man and he probably does deserve to be killed.
This is my sig.
But Wired's main complaint seems to be this: That sets a potentially troubling precedent, given that terms-of-service agreements sometimes contain onerous provisions, and are rarely read by users. I agree with them that equating a TOS violation with "hacking" might be a stretch, but it is already well established case law that unreasonable, illegal, or outrageous terms in a contract cannot be enforced. And a TOS agreement is, essentially, a contract between you and the service provider. So we aren't all suddenly going to be charged as felons because the
As the indictment is handed down, the issue being legally resolved is the question of whether or not a crime has been committed. Most of us think a rather heinous crime was committed and, as Lori Drew is the only accused, she's getting the benefit of people's wrath. We all know that she is innocent in the eyes of the law, but we also know that "Josh Evans" did not invent himself.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
It's the mother that should be blamed, not her daugther.
Let her live her life as she can, she surely is already much troubled about what is/have happeing/hapenned
Then take it off the Internet to begin with. A grown woman tormented a 13-year old until she committed suicide. Why create case law criminalizing contract violations?
Did you yawn to cause the deaths in Burma?
Did she create the MySpace page to hurt and torment the girl?
Do you have the slightest idea wtf your talking about?
Both are willful acts, knowingly undertaken, which cause the death of another. Both are selfish and show a careless disregard for human life. But I don't think they rise to the title of murder. Nor does this idiot woman's behavior. Child abuse? Yes. Manslaughter? Maybe. But if its murder than everyone whose posted here is a murderer.
I understand the concern about creating a legal precident, but even if they successfully prosecute I don't think that it automatically creates a legal precident to throw someone in jail for violation of terms of service no matter how small the infraction. That would be a pretty flimsy application of the judgement. IANAL, but it would seem to me that there are significant circumstances in this case that would prevent someone from coming along and using it against someone who simply violated the terms of service without any other aggrivating circumstances. It's not like some moronic lawyer could come along and say "we convicted this woman for violation of terms of service that resulted in someone's death, and therefore we should convict this guy here because he exceeded his download cap". No judge in the world would buy off on that. At least I would hope not. So I think the back story does have some relevance in the application of the law. I sign up with bogus information for web services all the time. Mostly because I don't like junk mail, unwanted phone calls, and spam. Not only that my personal information is mine, and if I wanted to sell it I would. Am I worried about going to jail for that? Not at all.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
I also think you are sounding an aweful lot like my mum. It seems to me that people just want the courts to decide if she is guilty. Perhaps you're right. I'll see if I can read them more in that light. however she was/is 49 years old, preying on a 13 year old... thats, just flatout fucking bullshit. we're talking about a 40-odd year old woman who knew the victim deliberately crafting a fake persona and instigating it into her life. Knowing that the target - a child - had mental issues, this deranged pathetic excuse for a human being nevertheless persisted in her campaign to deceive the child, involving as many of her own daughter's friends as possible....The woman deserves what is coming, and I will laugh happily every time I hear her family has suffered misfortune If the 40 year old woman hadn't pushed her over the edge by deliberately tormenting Nope...I don't want to bother reading any more since I've read them already. It seems clear to me that the vast majority of posters are assuming her guilt already.
Max.
No, I think you were dead on earlier. I'm not sure if you're from the US, but 'round these parts, basically when a case like this happens- the news and media outlets report these things as if the defendant is already guilty, and put in catch phrases like "alleged" and "possible," but the insinuations they make stick. Public opinion usually mirrors the desired projected opinion of the media outlets.
Ask any american if they thought OJ Simpson was guilty. Everybody I know thinks he is, despite the fact that the court found him not guilty.
This is not an issue of "let's wait and see." Typically, the general populous sees news headlines such as "Person X being investigated for crime Y against Z" and interperate is to mean "Person X committed Y against Z, but we have to wait for the court to sentence him/her."
So while a majority of the logical people here at slashdot may believe "indicted" means just that- It's safe to assume that the general populous will make the guilty connection even when the media outlets do cover their asses with terms like "allegedly."
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
If you dig a little further you will see that the woman in question is becoming famous in her town... and so is her husband.
I suspect they'll be financially ruined for what they did. No one will buy a house from him (he's a realtor) and her advertising newsletter won't get ads--or readers.
She's squirming now like most criminals trying to find some explanation she can live with for the evil she did. Everybody needs to be the hero in their life story... and it sounds like she'll be a hero (in her own mind)--but a poor one.
Well, that is additional evidence to me.
However, she is claiming to be innocent, no matter what she may have said in the past. Someone can admit to something for any number of reasons - sometimes to hide an even worse 'something'.
Do you really think this action deserves the death penalty? Do they have that in California?
Max.
"MySpace's user agreement requires registrants, among other things, to provide factual information about themselves and to refrain from soliciting personal information from minors or using information obtained from MySpace services to harass or harm other people. By allegedly violating that click-to-agree contract, Drew committed the same crime as any hacker.
That sets a potentially troubling precedent, given that terms-of-service agreements sometimes contain onerous provisions, and are rarely read by users. "
This hits close to home, as my sister-in-law is mentally ill and unable to properly care for herself, so she is currently living with my wife and me. And her parents absolutely do not understand that this is a real illness -- they have repeatedly told her that she just needs to "snap out of it" and pull herself together, and that she just needs to exercise some willpower and stop feeling the way she does.
And of course every time they have a conversation like this she is left in tears and feeling completely worthless, which is great for somebody that's going through some serious problems to begin with. She has repeatedly said that she wishes she had some kind of gaping wound instead, because at least then people would take it seriously.
Mental illness can be frustrating -- I'm frustrated with her myself sometimes. But I have never doubted for a second that she is truly ill, and she is taking her meds and going to therapy and everything else she needs to do in order to get better. And it's working; just not quickly enough for her parents, evidently.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
This women is basically a online troll, as much as we may not like her or think she is evil she is no different then any other online troll.
/. or others due to there violation of a civil agreement between the site operator and the user, that is clearly a civil matter between the two.
This case is scary because next people will be arrested for trolling
Also it is important to note that the girl who killed herself approached her parents in a state of emotional breakdown after the "breakup" and her mother couldn't care less, thats why she went up stairs and hung herself in her bedroom. To get back at her MOTHER for not caring about her horrible life as hanging yourself in the home in a place readily to be found (such as bedroom or garage) by a family member is about punishing them, its a calculated decision to show them what they have done.
If anyone should be charged it should be the MOTHER because she actually had a DUTY to care for the girl unlike the troll....
I'm looking over the postings and I see the usual "throw the book at the defendant!" or "the girl needs to grow some skin." These types of stories bring out the worst in this crowd and sight a severe flaw in thinking... we aren't thinking about the middle ground.
This woman Drew needs to be punished. She started this thing up as a joke. A very stupid and sick joke. However I don't think she should do 80 years for the crime. She should do time as an example to people who think they can just find a random person online, take advantage of them, and cause severe harm. Then they should be let out after some time and allowed to move on. The intent was not to kill the girl but they were very reckless.
At the same time, the other side has a great point. This girl needed to grow some skin, and where were the parents? This wasn't murder, and shouldn't be treated as such. The parents deserve some satisfaction, but they need to own some blame too.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I read one poster call this murder.
Lets assume she did do it.
I wonder if suicide was her aim or, if she knew that suicide would be the result, she would have done it.
I guess people can get pretty fanatical about their children in the US, so if she thought her child was being threatened anything is possible.
Even 'foregone conclusions' need to be proved in a court of law.
Anyway...getting bored of this. GN.
Max.
"The family, on the other hand, has a legitimate case which they should take to the civil courts."
That is most certainly the best course of action to take.
This prosecution is an example of what the road to hell is paved with.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
So, if a husband divorces the wife, which causes emotional stress to a young delicate girl that results in her suicide i guess it's ok to jail the husband for murder?
However close they were, they never met in real life. Would this be akin to finding out your lover has been cheating on you? Should you be held liable if the person cheated on ended their life?
Hell, I guess artists and musicians should be held liable if their emo songs cause the death of another person, charge them with murder.
How about putting some responsibility on the person actually committing suicide? A kid is not responsible for her own actions? Then blame it on the parents. They knew she was on the computer unsupervised, they knew she was unstable and didn't give her the attention she needed. Parents are responsible for their children until they turn 18 but more and more all i hear about is how the parents fail at being parents.
The only outcome of convicting this woman would make it's illegal to hide or change your identity online. The internet was made based on being anonymous. Now using female characters in wow could be considered illegal and whatever far fetched reasons they want to try and convict her for. It's not murder, it's not manslaughter or involentary manslaughter. She never met the kid under the guise of her alias. Yes, it was incredibly dumb of her to suggest to kill herself but how many times do you hear kids saying stupid stuff like that? Prove to me she wanted the kid to kill herself and maybe i'll believe the murder charges, otherwise it's taken out of context.
You don't understand the story. This girl was depressed and suicidal, and had attempted suicide before. She told her best friend this. Her best fiend felt slighted over something that happened, and told her mom all about it. Mom created an account belonging to a "13 year old boy" who "went to another highschool" and started e-dating her. Telling her how smart and pretty she was, how he can't wait to meet her. She got her daughter and her daughter's friends to play along, mentioning having met this fake boy over the summer and other such stories, to make sure she believed he was real, to cement what a heart-throb and a sweet caring guy he was. Then one day "he" told her he was lying for a joke, she's stupid and ugly and world would be better off if she was dead. And she killed herself.
A post above said that the mother denies it. This may be true now, but initially she confessed and boasted that she did nothing illegal. She said it doesn't matter what I said, she was crazy and would have killed herself no matter what. She has said such things as "It's done, she killed herself, let it go" and so on. She admits telling her to kill herself, she admits making this account to spy on her and "see if she was talking about my daughter behind her back". Only now that she is in trouble does she backpeddle and say she was lying about all of that, she didn't actually do it!
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
You're right. IANAL, I took one semester of Business Law in college. But the one thing I took away from that is that it seemed like the law was mostly common sense. Applying common sense here I think she should be prosecuted. If I remember correctly the use of precident has to include most of the circumstances of the case being used. Maybe it's different in a criminal case as most business law involves civil suits. I don't think a lawyer could argue that just because someone broke the terms of service the same fate should be applied unless the same (or similar) results occur. Maybe a terms of service violation isn't the right approach, but I think she should suffer some consequences for her actions, and thusfar she's suffered none (other than becoming a social outcast). I'm thinking criminal negligence; aggrivated battery maybe. What most irritated me was the suggestion that she would have committed suicide anyway eventually. There's no way to know that, and even if it were true it doesn't in my opinion absolve that woman of her responsibility in the matter.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
I'll address your last example. I certainly don't want to belabor the 'assumptions' argument, but you (and I'm sure many other people) are probably reading more into people's impulsive and emotional writing quirks than may be apparent (the question is; how much of what and how they are writing are just meant to be emotional appeals, rather than their actual moral outlook on the subject). As I've stated before already, it is just my opinion, but I think once (most) people get over their knee-jerk reactions, they settle down a bit. I could go over the posts myself, but I think this is one of the more extreme posts. There are certainly many people like yourself that make counterpoints.
:)
And BTW, your mum sounds intelligent
Best regards,
UTW
this includes free speech fundamentalism
the true test of a fair and just society is one which tempers ALL ideological concepts with exceptions. ALL ideological concepts must be limited: not just religion in government, not just police powers
but also things like privacy, property rights, freedom of the press: all these concepts have their limits. ALL ideological concepts have their limits and exceptions
fundamentalism is not solely the sin of social conservatives and the right. fundamentalism is also a sin of the left
for example, if you are fundamentalist on the issue of abortion, even you understand that if the life of the mother is threatened an abortion is ok
if you are a property rights fundamentalist, even you understand eminent domain for say, a highway society needs is ok
and finally, if you are a free speech fundamentalist, even you understand that yelling fire in a crowded theatre is not ok
but some free speech fundamentalists are not thinking about this case. they are just applying a litmus test: "what someone else said does not make them responsible for someone else killing themselves" and closing their minds on the issue
you fail, fundamentalists. this case:
1. involves an adult preying on a child
2. involves an adult preying on a child she KNEW was suicidal
3. involves an adult purposefully and maliciously and over an extended period of time lying and manipulating the feelings of that child
4. and then suggesting she kill herself
this is culpability, this is intent to do harm, this is and should be punishable in a fair and just society
don't be a fundamentalist. examine the issue, think about it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can sue you because it's Friday. All I have to do is show why it being Friday hurts me, and why I think it's your fault, and it becomes an actionable 'offense'.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I think you understand what I am saying, but not the angle which I am approaching the issue from.
A lawyer could, if this woman is found guilty on all counts, come along and say "This woman was found guilty under a computer crimes (anti-hacking) law for a violation of terms of service, therefore we should convict this person for ciminally unauthorized access to our system since he was not welcome under our TOS."
Does that sound good? Sign up with a fake name on some lame messageboard, get in a flame war with some crazy jerk, make rude comments, jerk eventually kills himself, you go to prison. Sound good? Thats the slippery slope folks, enjoy the ride downhill.
This is just another attack on *speech*. As usual, its veiled under a think coat of "OMG, won't someone please think of the children!". Charge someone with menacing or harassment, sure. But holding someone responsible for some nut that kills themselves because they were "big meanies" to them, is total hogwash.
This was just a case of "public outrage" over a cute little girl gone overboard. Her county and home state knew they had no case against the woman. But as usual, here come the Feds (trampling out of their jurisdiction, abusing the commerce clause as usual), to throw a zillion trumped up charges at her, just to get a few to stick. All are bogus. Fear this.
btw, FYI: that girl got into a big screaming match argument with *her mother* right before she ran upstairs to kill herself. What did the mother say that upset her so much? Shall we charge the mother now?
trolling is like taking a paper bag of crap and throwing it into a crowd and revelling in the screams if disgust
1. its anonymous, not personal
2. its temporary and short
3. its done amongst a group of equally aged and emotionally mature people
4. the target is a crowd of people, a community, not a single person
what this evil woman did is more like stalking: purposefully targetting and manipulating one person over an extended period of time
furthermore, most disgusting, this was the actions of an adult against a child. there is no understanding of trolling that assumes that an adult is picking on children
and to go even further into disgust, the adult KNEW the child had emotional and suicidal issues when she set about this plan of decpetion and emotional manipulation
so this case cannot set a precedent against trolling
it can only set a precedent for:
1. prolonged one-on-one stalking
2. manipulating the emotions of a minor
3. manipulating the emotions of someone you know to be suicidal or otherwise emotionally fragile
all of which, in fact, deserve to made criminal
this is not just trolling, what this evil woman did
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"It's BS, plain and simple. People are sad and angry that chubbo ended it all and want someone to pay....legality and sanity or not."
Which, imho, is exactly what's wrong with America. There's this notion that someone always has to take the blame for something bad that happens in life, and worse, usually that is the only way that the perceived victims (in this case the family) seek closure to come to grips with what happened. Alot of times there's a strong financial component to it too, like in the case of the 911 victims families. This isn't true closure, its vengeance.
Sometimes shit just happens. And it really sucks. Sometimes someone is to blame for it, but lots of times there isn't anyone to blame. And sometimes it is in fact the victim's fault. I suspect this is one of those times where there's no one to really blame, which is why this woman's being done on some trumped up computer hacking charges. I also suspect she'll walk, in the end. Is she human garbage for teasing this girl? IMO, yes. Should she go to jail for it on some creative interpretation of unrelated law? IMO, no.
Sure it can. That's what case law is all about.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Myspace's name has been in the middle of all this, there was an adult who was potentially a predator interacting with kids. I don't believe Lori is culpable in the death of the 13 year old, the girl made her own choices. However, Lori did misrepresent herself when she signed up for the account in such a way that she essentially defrauded both Myspace and the girl into believing she was someone who she was not. Her false statements resulted in her getting access she may have otherwise been barred from. I don't know the details about Myspace policies regarding minors or how (or even *if*, but I assume they are) they're segregated from adults, but the long and short of it is that Lori Drew tarnished Myspace's reputation through her fraud.
"Causality does not imply responsibility"
Causality does not *neccesarily* imply responsibility. But in this case, I think even a six year old would agree what Lori Drew did to that clinically depressed 13 year old teen was wrong.
To me, it wasn't just wrong, it was mean - evil.
Should she face criminal prosecution under this statute? Probably not. But there's definitely grounds for a civil suit against her.
"Responsibility comes when the action you did was intrinsically a crime (regardless of the consequences)."
I don't know about you, but for me, "Responsibility" is about:
A) owning up to your mistakes
B) making amends (to the extent that it's possible to do so)
C) learning from it - making myself a better person and/or the world a better place.
If everyone only took responsibility for "crimes," things they could potentially be prosecuted for (or sued) in a court, how much worse off the world would be?
Change begins with me.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
In this case, we can see a US Atty was as indignant as most decent people and has gone pretty far out of his way to do something about it.
Perhaps DREW can Facebook from the big house.
so if someone murders someone, and the family of the victim forgives the murderer, society shouldn't punish the murderer? of course not. the murderer needs to be punished no matter what the victims think
the issue is society's standards of justice, not an individual's standards of justice, not even the victim's standards of justice. if i murder someone, and the victim's family forgives me, that's it? no: i've proven to society that i murder people. therefore, society has every moral and logical right to prevent future murders by locking me up
#2:
that this woman involved even more minors in this disgusting escapade is FURTHER reason to punish her, not extenuating circumstances that relieve her of culpability
if i have a son who buys a gun to kill someone, and threatens to shoot a bunch of kids at school, and then i find about this, and gleefully pick up the gun, help my son with the list of kids to murder, and shoot some of the kids myself, am i somehow less guilty than if i had arranged the school shooting all by myself without my son's involvement?
no, i'm actually even more repugnant, because rather than dissuade my son from doing something wrong, i taught him how to do more wrong
so this woman discovers this escapade of picking on an emotionally fragile suicidal girl. what does she do? she gleefully gets involved! so she's guilty of all the crimes as if she had done the manipulation herself, and now she has the further evil of teaching minors how to be cruel and manipulate an isolated child known to be suicidal
what is she teaching her children about the feelings of others, especially about the feelings of a lonely, emotionally fragile, suicidal girl? that we should decieve, manipulate, and be cruel to over a period of time?
the involvement of other minors in the crime doesn't relieve this woman of guilt, it makes the woman MORE evil and punishable
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
At issue is not whether she's guilty, it's whether there's a law that makes her actions criminal. It's already abundantly clear that she's a bitch and society has condemned her actions. There just doesn't seem to be any good method of legal recourse against her.
(Although I suppose MySpace could sue her for breaching the terms of service and the resulting bad press for MySpace, that would be civil charges, not criminal.)
that I understand where you are coming from. I also think that to some degree laws (or more importantly, selective enforcement of said laws) are utilized to remove "undesirable" behavior from society. Rather this is a desired ideal, I'd disagree, but I think its rather subjective.
The next day, after telling her mother, Christina "Tina" Meier, about the increasing number of hurtful messages, the two got into an argument over the vulgar language Meier used in response to the messages and she did not log off when her mother told her to.[3] After the argument, Meier ran upstairs to her room. She was found twenty minutes later, hanging by the neck in a closet.
Now, do you think it was the messages, or the fact that her mother punished her child who was a victim and clearly already distraught? Who is the uncaring party here? The other woman was certainly guilty of harassment, but the child's own mother failed to support her.
Seems pretty clear to me that her daughter's thought process was "this boy that I loved is hurting me, now my mom hates me and thinks it's my fault." When your own parents don't support you, help you, or comfort you- it's crushing.
Please help metamoderate.
What Lori Drew did was awful. But, her prosecution is scary. Based on the posts I've seen, it's obvious slashdotters are not RTFA'ing but arguing the points in the article anyway. In a nutshell, Ms. Drew faces jail time for violating myspace's TOS.
The prosecutions argument boils down to:
1. Ms. Drew provided false identifying information to myspace.
2. Therefore, she violated their TOS.
3. Since she violated the TOS she did not have authorized access to their computers.
4. By accessing their computers without authorization, she violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
I seriously doubt there is anyone on slashdot who has never violated a TOS.
Does your ISP prohibit running servers, but you setup an FTP, HTTP, or vent server anyway? That could mean prison time. Have you ever given false identifying information to a web site so you could avoid SPAM? If so, go to jail. Do you even read TOS? If not, you might be a criminal but don't know it.
People are righly outraged by what Ms. Drew did. But, making it a crime to violate a TOS to satisfy that outrage is a mistake.
"Giving bad advice that works out okay isn't acceptable. What the pastor should have told her was "get out of the house--take the children (if applicable) and call the cops." Anything else was negligence on his part."
I think you missed the point - society has changed to the point where we expect the government to protect us on an individual basis. You advocate that she ask others to defend her - leave her own house (and live on the sufferance of others) and call the government to protect her. But the courts have ruled on many occasions that the police/government have no duty to protect any individual from harm. If she calls the police and they don't come, they cannot be held liable for negligence. Their primary function is to enforce the law AFTER it is broken - crime prevention is secondary, and enforcing court orders is a distant third.
So if the police cannot be held responsible for protecting her, who can? Historically, it has been the family, but for various reasons that option is no longer open to many. So who is going to protect her.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
THE FAGGOT AND THE FAT FUCK SCREWED UP A SYSTEM THAT DIDN'T NEED FIXING. WHAT ELSE IS NEW? COMPLAIN ALL YOU WANT, THEY'LL NEVER LISTEN.
I JUST WISH THEY'D GIVE US A WAY TO TURN IT OFF.
Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling. Don't use so many caps, it's like yelling.
THERE. THAT SHOULD SATISFY THE RATIO OF CAPS TO NON-CAPS. TOO BAD YOUR FILTERS ARE SO EASILY DEFEATED. WHAT'S THE MATTER? ARE SLASHDOT USERS SUCH PUSSIES THAT THEY CAN'T HANDLE A LITTLE BIT OF YELLING?
You sir, are a moron.
If you yawned, *knowing* that it may in fact, hurt those people in Burma, and if in fact they then died from it, *even if you did not intend for them to die but only to 'hurt' them* you are indeed, responsible.
Your causality does not apparently take into effect things like motive and intent compared to relative outcome, which is moronic. These are people, not formulas.
FTA:
Last month, an employee of Drew (woman in question), 19-year-old Ashley Grills, told ABC's "Good Morning America" she created the false MySpace profile but Drew wrote some of the messages to Megan.
Grills said Drew suggested talking to Megan via the Internet to find out what Megan was saying about Drew's daughter, who was a former friend.
Grills also said she wrote the message to Megan about the world being a better place without her. The message was supposed to end the online relationship with "Josh" because Grills felt the joke had gone too far.
"I was trying to get her angry so she would leave him alone and I could get rid of the whole MySpace," Grills told the morning show.
Sounds like this started out as a concerned mother for why the neighbors kid isn't getting along with hers anymore. Are we sure we're prosecuting the right person here.. I wish I knew more. But if Drew asked Grills to make it account and didn't specify to make a boy to be her boyfriend etc.. then who is really the manipulative one here? I guess it does say Drew sent messages (although she denies it); and Grills only said 'some of the messages'. This seems to be more complex than at first glance (still a horrid tragedy); but more than a manipulative crone.
Really? Because if, say, the person was a 40-year-old who had created the fake MySpace profile with the purpose of soliciting sex from the 13-year-old, I'm sure many people would have no problem with the criminal charges. Realistically, the problem here isn't that she created the fake profile (and that they keep focusing on that aspect is, IMO, stupid) but the problem is that a 40-something-year-old woman got on the internet, told a 13-year-old girl that the woman was a 13-year-old boy and engaged in a relationship with her so that she could serve her own twisted ends of torturing and tormenting the girl. It is as simple and as complex as that to me - that someone (allegedly this woman who is on trial) was preying on a 13-year-old on the internet via lies about their age/gender/etc. What if, instead of using the account to torture the girl, the woman had instead suggested they "meet" and then raped her? Would everyone be saying that doing this wasn't a crime?
Just a level of perspective.
"Does bouncing count?" - Silk, Magician's Gambit by David Eddings
Apologies to Slashdot readers if someone else already posted the following link(s) or material, but I looked for it and related keywords over the entire thread, finding nothing. Orin S. Kerr over at The Volokh Conspiracy (a legal blog with a cool name) has posted a useful quick analysis of the matter, which I believe is more important than might appear at first glimpse. It's well worth reading in its entirety, but I'll quote a short stretch of it:
(The original post has embedded links to relevant citations).
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Actually, TFA says that both the girl and MySpace are named as victims.
I'm not defending the woman's actions, because the entire thing does sound messed up. However, she didn't kill that girl. Even if she had come right out and said "You should go kill yourself!", it still wouldn't be her fault that the girl did it. I have a hard time believing the conspiracy charge as well, but whatever.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
You are wrong. In civil court they would ask for money and have to show financial harm. In criminal they just need to show that by violating rules "users" agreed to the user caused harm to another person. I think the key issue here is age. If the user was of legal age (18 or older) then they should be nailed to the wall because they acted with careless malice. jmho
"I can sue you because it's Friday. All I have to do is show why it being Friday hurts me, and why I think it's your fault, and it becomes an actionable 'offense'."
You could certainly try.
Such a case would lack "standing" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law) (since I didn't "make" the day: "Friday") and other tort requirements. The case would be thrown out or summarily dismissed and you'd be left vulnerable to a counter suit for frivolous litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frivolous_litigation. By me.
You'd probably lose, too.
Yes, Yes, I understand your point about there being too many lawsuits. Do you think Ms. Meier's family would be frivolous to sue here?
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
...for it is not a crime to suggest how other people should live their lives (or terminate them as the case may be). Lori Drew may be a manipulative shitbag, I think that much is pretty much agreed-upon. However, she obviously did not abuse her position of authority as an adult to put a child in harm's way. She was a cruel woman pretending to be a cruel child. Good lord people, if we locked-up every human being who says something cruel that might hurt someone else's feelings, there wouldn't be many people on the street.
I wonder why nobody has suggested the depressed child's parents might be responsible for this. They were in the same house as their daughter when she committed suicide. Did they do their due diligence when it comes to not just plopping the kid down in front of a computer and letting anonymous people on the internet babysit her? Did the psychologist who was helping her (I must assume Megan was undergoing counseling because she'd attempted suicide previously) just fail to address the internet relationships and activities that she was involved in?
It's a far greater concern to me, anyway, that parents dump their kids, unattended, on the internet. There were a few pretty young kids playing World of Warcraft when I was active, we had a 9-year-old boy in our guild (granted, that was just what he said, and to my knowledge none of us had met him, but he sounded young in voice communication so we didn't doubt his claims)...and while I mostly exercised restraint and watched my virtual mouth when he was around, this was a guild comprised mostly of young adults and he was exposed to a good bit of language and subject matter that most parents would freak-out over. That's one example, the internet is basically like a downtown area in a big city-- a mix of people, not all well-intentioned, businesses, red-light districts, social settings that are good for adults but not minors, and if parents don't supervise their kids' internet activities, they're endangering them.
I think we can all agree that the charges in this case would never even have been considered if this had been a garden variety case of teens using false user IDs to say nasty things to each other on MySpace. That said, I think criminal case against Drew is a proxy for two separate matters of public concern, both of which I find to be pretty disturbing.
First, this case is really about some sort of public retribution against Drew for her actions. The victim's family want closure, and the public wants blood. Given the conduct involved, this is understandable. However, a lot of the comments to date suggest (or outright assert) that Drew somehow "caused" this suicide through her acts. I question that conclusion as a matter of moral principle, and I flatly disagree with it as a matter of legal principle (as did the federal prosecutors--hence the lack of a homicide charge). Tenuous charges of illegal access and "conspiracy" (conspiracy to do what, exactly?) are a stand-in for the homicide charges that a lot of people seem to want, but which could never stick, and that's a good thing. Drew's actions were repulsive, and probably indicate that she had some mental problems of her own, but they weren't criminal. The point of the criminal law is not to prevent people from being miserable bastards to each other--it's there to ensure the bare minimum of conduct for a functional society.
Second, a lot of people seem to want some sort of criminal punishment to be imposed for "cyberbullying." (I'm not even sure what that word means. Not to be indelicate, but I regularly receive e-mails from drug companies intimating that my genitalia are too small. They're consciously trying to make me feel badly about myself so I'll buy their product. Do I have a case? Does the state?) I'd question the judgment of a parent who knowingly allows their child to use a service that puts their personal information in front of literally millions of anonymous strangers. If you're going to do that, though, you can't turn around and cry foul when the use of that service produces negative repercussions; honestly, what did you think was going to happen? I'm troubled by the notion that the charges in this case could be used to encourage people to play nice on MySpace. If there was criminal harassment here, charge Drew with criminal harassment. If not, let her get on with her sad little life.
She planned to do so with others........ Check on the conpiracy
She willfully committed a crime that resulted in death.......Check on the homicide.
remember folks if you steal a candy bar and the store clerk gets hit by a truck running after you its still homicide. The real crime here is the lazy ass local prosecutors that haven't charged this bitch yet. Of course if she loses this case all the elements will be establish for the prosecution and a homicide conviction would be easy.
Everybody thinks OJ is guilty because he is. He got off because Fuhrman said "nigger" and so the defense managed to get the jury to believe the cops planted evidence.
The latest fiasco with OJ in Vegas just backs up the assumption that he's sort of a loose cannon.
We have probably all also broken the speed limit.
If we break the speed limit and cause an accident where someone dies its vehicular homicide.
I'm sure few will agree and that I'll be called an asshole for this, but...
While what this mother did was morally wrong, she should not be punished by the law for it. It was a cruel joke gone bad, can you imagine the fallout of this type of court decision? She obviously has skewed morals and bad judgement, on that much we can agree. Think about it, if I jokingly call one of my friends a "fatty", and then they go kill themselves am I really responsible for THEIR CHOICE? I've been called names, I didn't kill myself. I've seen the end of close relationships, I didn't kill myself. I am responsible for MY well-being, mental and physical, not everyone else's -- that is up to them. If a teacher gives a student a bad grade and the student kills themself, do we blame the teacher? If a boss reprimands an employee and that employee kills themself, do we blame the boss? If someone gets a DUI and then kills themselves, do we blame the cop who pulled them over?
We can't make everyone else liable for other people's decisions, period. This mother exercised bad judgement and worse morals, but that is all. The mother of the child on the other hand, who WAS responsible for the well-being of this girl, is probably somewhat responsible. You people need to get over your nanny society bullcrap -- I am not your kids parent and I will not go out of my way to parent your kids. It doesn't take a village, it just takes more than the crappy parents that most people seem to be nowadays.
I am not a teenager.
I am not your boyfriend.
I would be sad if you left the world.
Please don't ask the police to prosecute me.
I see what you are saying, and I'll concede that if a judge had an ax to grind, or felt like you stepped over the line by accessing a system in an unauthorized manor then maybe it could apply (abusively). But I would think there already is a lot of other case law that would more accurately fit that situation. Wouldn't a lawyer attempting to apply that case law have to prove that the case is similar (ie. resulted in someone's death)? Like I said, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's how case law works. From Wikipedia (yeah I know, not the best source)
Case law The other type of precedent is case law. In common law systems this type of precedent is granted more or less weight in the deliberations of a court according to a number of factors. Most important is whether the precedent is "on point," that is, does it deal with a circumstance identical or very similar to the circumstance in the instant case? Second, when and where was the precedent decided? A recent decision in the same jurisdiction as the instant case will be given great weight. Next in descending order would be recent precedent in jurisdictions whose law is the same as local law. Least weight would be given to precedent that stems from dissimilar circumstances, older cases that have since been contradicted, or cases in jurisdictions that have dissimilar law.
I see now from doing a bit of reading that legal experts are worried about the precedent it could set, and I'm wondering why when the definition of the applicaiton of case law seems so plain as to make it a non issue. After reading that article I'm forming a new opinion though. Thinking about it further outside of the immediate emotional reaction to the situation I'm wondering why they don't procsecute her under something like aggravated manslaughter. They would have to prove that she caused her death, but I don't think that's beyond the realm of possibility. In my mind she did.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
i made the case that what the woman did wasn't trolling
you then bring up some completely unrelated scenarios
no one with the slightest bit of common sense and the lowest of iqs would confuse telling a child santa doesn't exist with what this woman did
why do you confuse the two scenarios?
why do you think anyone else would?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ms. Drew's prank was ill-considered and reprehensible. But it has been acknowledged that Megan Meier suffered from clinical depression. Suicide means it was the depression that killed her, not the MySpace hoax.
What if some other adult in Megan's life had said something mean to her, and she later committed suicide? Would that adult then have been charged? What if teasing at school had immediately proceeded her death? Would it have been treated as a death inflicted by the teaser? How many adolescents who don't suffer from clinical depression are mercilessly teased, and never commit suicide?
I know, the charges against Ms. Drew are actually for misrepresentation, hence violation of MySpace terms of service. How many of the World's Internet users are guilty of misrepresenting themselves in some way (e.g., age, gender, occupation, etc.)? And by extension, are the charges supposed to herald the end of anonymity on the Internet? Does anyone want the liberties that only anonymity can protect somehow abolished? Or intimidated away?
The big picture counts. We might be disgusted with Ms. Drew's conduct. But legally prosecuting all bad behavior comprises an attack on freedom far more problematic, and affecting us all, than this person's foolish, mean-spirited prank.
Idea: Half of slashdot create profiles and harass Ms Drew.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Nothing was taken from her but an illusion. The internet is full of them. Was she vulnerable? Yeah, she sure was. She was preyed upon by an illusion of a friend. Things are rarely what they seem online. It's too easy to make up a name, to play a persona. None of this is to say that things that are real can't be spawned from the online medium, but we have a serious problem when kids or anyone else starts believing in the illusions without verifying them. Or when parents don't supervise a child who's at-risk in this enchanted forest of illusions and masquerade.
Or even, like a previous poster stated, child abuse. Aggravated child abuse lands you in prison for a few decades, minimum.
The final outcome makes a difference as well. Driving drunk & crossing the center line is one thing. If there just happens to be another car on the road at the same time &place and you hit it & kill someone, it's a very different deal even though in truth, it could very well be the only difference was blind luck.
In this case, doing what she did to a grown up would most likely be seen as a practical joke. Doing it to a young girl who was emotionally vulnerable and suicidal to begin with is a very different situation. And we know that she knew the girl had problems because she said so in her own words, early on using the age old blame-the-victim strategy. In terms of the case of her defense, probably more than anything else, making public statements that the teen was suicidal may be what results in her conviction.
Without getting into the in's & out's of the particular charges and approach used against this woman (which is a separate issue) as far as justice goes, there's definitely a smell-test issue. It's quite clear that what this woman did was creepy, vicious and just plain wrong morally. Here actions resulted in something terrible - and any reasonable person would see that it tormenting the girl in this manner would very likely lead to this outcome.
Vote Quimby.
its called novel theory. the novel theory usually gets challenged if it leads to a conviction, and if it survives the challenge, it creates new law
you are phrasing it however that just breaking a website's tos leads to criminal conviction. this is some sor tof irrational fea ron your part. just like you say to me that there is noone here who doesn't think that what the woman did was a complete asshole thing to do, and was morally wrong, i am also going to say to you that noone in the legal system thinks that just breaking a tos is grounds for criminal prosecution
the point being, this is a special case. any landmark ruling on the case will only apply to special extenuating circumstances
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Apparently, /.ers are of two minds here. The first group says criminal charges should be laid due to responsibility from the actions alleged. The second group gives entertaining strawman arguments that try to compare intentional infliction of emotional harm (if she had been able to pull off this charade in person, telling the girl to go kill herself would at least have gotten child protective services involved, and likely charges for child abuse, assuming the girl didn't kill herself) to a bunch of similar scenarios of causing death unintentionally, including, as above, children saying mean things to one another (there's a reason why most countries have varying ages of criminal responsibility - e.g., 12 and under can't face criminal charges, 13-17 get glorified slaps on the wrist, 18+ get full responsiblity under the law - because their understanding of the consequences of their actions change - a 13-year-old saying this to another 13-year-old could be reasonably assumed not to get the consequences of).
It's all about intent, folks. That's what makes crime. (Well, there are a few crimes that don't need intent, but all the "causing death" ones do.)
This woman intentionally caused emotional harm (to which she initially admitted to, and has apparently backpedaled), which any reasonable adult should realise would have a reasonable chance of causing death. That would at the very least be gross negligence causing death. At the least, child abuse (as far as I know, it doesn't have to be *your* child to get this charge) and fraudulent representation (perhaps that's a civil case, not sure).
If the woman pled guilty, she'd likely not serve much, if any, time. Because she's denying it now, she'll be facing near-maximums on her sentence if found guilty.
It's really no different than how any death caused as a result of a felonious action can be automatically bumped up to Murder in the First Degree, even if there was no premeditated intent to cause death. The idea is that you intended to commit the original felony (assuming you're found guilty), and it can be reasonably assumed that there is a mortal danger there, as a natural outcome of your actions. This woman committed grave child abuse, which most adults who have dealt with 12-15 year old girls would reasonably assume could cause such emotional distress as to be fatal to the girl.
And the whole case would be entirely different if this 40-year-old woman were preying on a 23-year-old woman. We would reasonably assume that a 23-year-old woman could be distressed by this type of rejection from a 23-year-old "man" on the internet, but not generally to the point of suicide. We're just talking about reasonable foresight of the consequences of one's intended actions.
it is not possible to write a law in totality. there is always a paragraph or passage or statement that is susceptible to being overly broad or miscontrued
the best you can do is be as specific as possible. mention what makes this case special, in the exact wording of the law: 1. adult versus minor, 2. specific, planned, long term emotional cruelty and deception, 3. foreknowledge of emotional fragility or suicidal tendencies
what happens is that this law, and every law ever written, get challenged in specific extenuating circumstances, and they get amended, the decisions of judges and juries color what the limits of a law should be
this is the way it has always been. you are assuming some sort of protection that never existed: that a law can cover everything that will ever happen, and always be enforced in the exact way its writers intended, without any room for misinterpretation. impossible
furthermore, a few incredibly rare cases are so bizarre as to require the creation of a completely new law, like this case. via the legislature, or via criminal prosecution with novel theory. novel theory gets challenged, judges underline the new iontepretation, life goes on. its always been that way
fact is, law is a living breathing thing, not dead computer code. it requires constant growth of new limbs to cover new situations like this, constant pruning when the limb gets overused and too broadly enforced, and the law must also mutate and change over time as a society's values change over time
there is no protection from what you want protection from. law can be abused and misinterpretted and too broadly interpretted. so the law mus tbe worded as specific as possible, and must be challenged all the time. justice is imperfect, it is a human thing, not a computer system
but because justice is imperfect is not a valid argument to stop trying to pursue justice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As revealed by the indictment, the "unauthorized access" results from various violations of MySpace's terms of service. I'm no expert on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), but at least one court has found that violation of a company's terms of service constitutes "unauthorized access" for purposes of the Act. See America Online, Inc. v. LCGM, Inc., 46 F. Supp. 2d 444, 450-51 (E.D. Va. 1998). The CFAA makes it illegal to, among other things, "intentionally access[] a computer without authorization or exceed[] authorized access, and thereby obtain[] . . . information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication." 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C). The punishment for violating this subsection of the CFAA is a fine or up to 5 years imprisonment if "the offense was committed in furtherance of any criminal or tortious act in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States or of any State." Id. (c)(2)(B)(ii). (Otherwise there needs to be some sort of pecuniary gain or the information gained needs to be worth $5,000 or more.) So, how did Drew allegedly violate the CFAA? MySpace's terms of service forbid you from lying to MySpace or using your account to harrass other users, obtain personal information from minors, posting photos of people without their consent, etc. Drew broke all of these terms when, among other things, she registered as a teenage boy, got personal information from the 13 year old victim, and posted a picture of a teenage boy without his consent. Because she violated MySpace's terms of service, her access to MySpace's servers was "unauthorized access." Her unauthorized access involved an "interstate . . . communication" because MySpace's servers are in California and Drew accessed them from a computer in Missouri. Drew allegedly used her account and the information she received to harass the victim to the point where it constituted the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, a well-recognized tort in Missouri (and, to my knowledge, recognized in all states). See, e.g., Central Missouri Elec. Co-op. v. Balke, 119 S.W.3d 627, 636 (Mo. Ct. App. 2003) ("To recover for intentional infliction of emotional distress, the [plaintiff] must show (1) the defendant's conduct was extreme and outrageous; (2) the defendant acted intentionally or recklessly; and (3) the defendant's conduct caused extreme emotional distress resulting in bodily harm."). Thus, her unauthorized access "was committed in furtherance of any . . . tortious act in violation of the . . . laws of the . . . any State." Now, you could argue that the indictment may be an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, but I don't see how you can argue that this indictment is frivolous. On the contrary, it appears to be the product of good lawyering. Drew better hire herself a good criminal defense attorney.
Did I mention that my fiancee died for licking the envelopes for our wedding's invitation?
You have my sincerest sympathy. I hope they find a suitable treatment for her. You should count your blessings, however - most mentally ill people in the US have no access to health care at all, let alone mental health care.
My friend Amy, who suffers from depression, has limited health care. At least she has Zoloft. Tami is bipolar, perhaps since her husband is now in the military she can get treatment before her condition is fatal. Her monied family has pretty much disowned her. I've helped talk her out of suicide before.
It is indeed heartbreaking.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
ummm actually she did, she and her friends were integral to the manipulation.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
law is not dead computer code, it is a living thing
its called novel theory. its used all the time in criminal and civil law
a prosecutor can prosecute her criminally in a new and different way. if he wins and the decision gets challenged, and a judge or jury underlines the original verdict, then new law is written, a new interpretation
furthermore: "they are selectively prosecuting on the grounds that people like you will take an alarmist view of what happened and convict on emotion rather than facts"
the only alarmism and fear here is coming from you. you honestly believe that if someone is convicted for a specific and extenuating circumstance like this, that all of a sudden they will throw people in jail for breaking a tos? alarmism, fear: yours, not anyone elses
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Theres a huge differance between you yawning, and you creating a fake myspace account to cyber bully a 13 yr old girl who already has depression and self esteme issues (the woman charged was friends of the family and knew the girls past). She deliberetly manipulated, taunted, lied to, insulted, and harmed this poor 13 yr old girl. That doesn't even compare to you yawning and you know it.
No i fully support putting someone in jail for being a heartless bitch
How about "Premeditatedly inflicting extreme emotional distress to someone, by manipulating him/her emotionally through the long term use of deception or coercion, with the agravant of knowing that the subject was emotionally unstable to the point that he/she could harm himself or others"?
I think there SHOULD be a criminal law against this. Votes, please?
The person to really be concerned about is the adult who thought it was a good idea to torment a young teenager in perhaps the most vicious way possible. A person like that is likely to have other anti-social behavior patterns.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The problem is that this will be used as the perfect excuse to make online identities founded in anonymity completely illegal. Think of the poor, emotionally abused children. It's very sad that we have to think like that in this day and age, but with the direction things are going and the legislation that's floating around, we can pretty much kiss goodbye any notion of saying something that may be out of line with the norm without attributing it to our full names, addresses, telephone numbers, etc.
Menus: Linux=function, Windows=vendor, OS X=as little as possible. Makes a statement, don't you think?
And evidence of being beaten (or she wouldn't have talked to a pastor) is evidence that the law has been broken. Calling the cops at that point is the right choice. Leaving the house is only a temporary measure that will help ensure her safety until the police do their job.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
This murder has resulted in a new law in Missouri that has a proposed effective date of 8/28/2008. Here is a link: http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills081/bills/hb1505.htm This law seems to make it illegal to cuss or use "course language" on the phone, internet or any form of writing, make anonymous phone calls if the intent is to frighten or disturb... so ANY prank calls could now potentially be a felony if the person on the receiving end is a minor and the person on the other end is adult. Making repeated phone calls is in this too - so if you get a collection ageny on your butt, you could possibly use this law and say they were frigtening you... especially if you are a minor - just have your kid screen your calls... if the kid answers, you have a case... Basically, any flame forum threads can become a possible felony if a kid is reading and feels disturbed or threatened in any way when reading... Something interesting in it - adult is defined as 21 years or older, child is any person under 17 years. I guess if you are 18, 19, or 20 you are not considered an adult so any crimes you commit under this law would be a misdemeanor instead of felony?... Something else interesting - repeat harassment is considered "aggravated stalking" so if flame wars are going to definitely fall under here if they go on and on and on... and if the person doing that stalking (flame ware) is adult and person receiving it is child, you it's a class D felony! Second offense in 5 years and it's Class C felony! Now the real kicker is in number 6... Any law enforcement officer may arrest, without a warrent, any person he or she has probable cause to believe has violated the provisions of this section... WOW! That means cops can arrest anyone at any time if the see that person on a phone, near a computer, or anywhere at any time doing anything more or less... What ever happened to privacy, free speech, and not to mention illegal search policies that actually meant something... This is just as bad, if not worse than what Bush is doing with illegal wiretaps since this is on a state level so it can be implemented or made harsher in other states. Hopefully this thing can be found to be unconstitutional in the near future.
A good idea might be a law that forbids the use of the internet or computers in general to weak minded individuals. We could build a "protector chip" into all computers that would read an RFID tag implanted into the weak-minded individuals (WMI's) and which would shutdown all network access if the WMI tried to use the computer.
Causing someone to kill themselves is pretty much murder. I'm pretty sure that if I herd you to the edge of a roof on a 10-story building and you fall off, that I'll be charged with murder.
If Drew is guilty of creating the MySpace account, she *should* be punished by being tortured to death in front of her relatives. Of course the US Injustice System is too scared to do the right thing.
She's not getting into trouble for setting up a fake MySpace. Don't leave out the other half of the story so it sounds better for your POV.
There is *NO* requirement for any given person to believe a person is innocent of anything unless evidence is presented. The only requirement is that a Jury not convict without evidence. They may all believe he is guilty, but they must not convict without evidence. If they do, any competent defense attorney *will* get the conviction overturned in appeals.
If she was responsible for the MySpace page, she deserves far worse than death.
She tortured a 13 year old to death.
There is no justice in this country.
Now I'm going to cut the brakes of some random car and when the guy kicks the bucket on the highway tomorrow I will not be responsible, because he's the one driving a car with no brakes and not me.
Analogically, a 40+ years old woman should know better. I really hope she gets what she deserves, no matter the means.
Thank god we no longer believe in personal responsibility of the individual anymore! If we don't like something, just make it a felony and it'll magically go away!
Get some backbone already... relationships end badly all the time, regardless of whether or not they're fictitious in nature. If I killed myself every time a relationship resulted in being stabbed in the back by someone I trusted, I'd have at least ten corpses to my name.
And don't give me the sob-story about how this person wasn't "able to make friends in school" or some such non-sense like that. You can't quantify stuff which requires personal effort to make happen.
Was it ethical for this other person to initiate this fake relationship? No. Should they go to prison for it? No. At best, this is a civil issue, not a criminal one. (Well, unless you really stretch the definition of "fraud" into relationships. But be ready for a lashing the next time you have a bad break-up with someone "clingy"...)
8==8 Bones 8==8
Oh jesus.
What if, instead of being a conniving, bitchy neighbour lady, the messages had instead come from an asshole teenage boy who e-dumped her in an equally mean way?
Since she didn't realize it was all a hoax, she wouldn't know the difference and we can safely assume the suicide would have happened in the same way.
Would that also be murder?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
If some MySpace data from a stranger was enough to cause a Denial-Of-Service against this girl's life, then there were some serious deficiencies in her mental firewall.
Has anyone asked what her network administrators' role was in all this? They really ought to have been keeping their daughter running more stably to begin with.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
You can't take the sky from me...
The liberal lawyers of America have done their job well. They have seeded a whole portion of the population to believe that the victims are responsible for the crime. This women organized and perpetuated a fraud. If she had scammed Megan out of $500 dollars, posing as a fictional character, it would be a clear cut case and no one would be defending her or trying to pass the blame on Megans Mom. This women is not being charged with manslaughter or reckless endangerment, she is being charged for the crime that she committed.
Ignorance can't even be cured by having it happen to you, apparently. People can compartmentalize their understanding.
You can't take the sky from me...
Because, like it or not, the woman in your example was no better beating her husband than he was beating her. It may have worked, but more often than not, it doesn't. I know people who've been hospitalized for shit like that. I know of (second hand) multiple people who've been killed for shit like that. Either the husband died or the wife died because she tried to "fight" back. Violence isn't bad. Violence is neutral. Performing CPR is a very violent act, it breaks ribs and bruises the person being saved, but the act isn't bad because it's violent.
Self defense is not "no better" than attacking someone. Another person has initiated the violence, you just turn it against them. So what if the attacker dies? He chose to attack, anything proportional that happens to him is his own fault, since it wouldn't have happened to him if he hadn't decided to do it to someone else.
If somebody tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back.
You can't take the sky from me...
As much as I'd like to see her punished for being a douchebag, what kind of slippery slope are we setting ourselves up for? A felony if you call someone a bad name? How stupid is that?
I agree that she is a horribly mean person (allegedly). But that 13 year old girl needed some fucking parenting and possibly psychiatric help if she was going to kill herself over a boy. I don't think it should be illegal to be a jackass to people, because then we open the (already leaking) floodgates to it being illegal to have your fucking feelings hurt.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
someone who thinks that society and the law functions the way you believe it does must lead a very fearful existence
you believe in the fallacy of the slippery slope
here, this is an example of the slippery slope at work... maybe if i invoke the idea of the slippery slope in another context, and you see how it is wrong, you will get some insight into your own fear-addled psyche:
me: "gay men should be allowed to marry"
you: "if change the law like that, then you are also legalizing polygamy, necrophilia, pedophilia, bestialty!"
me: "wtf?" (scratches head)
the idea that gay marriage means necorphilia will inevitably become legal due to a legal slippery slope is of course bullshit. but i hope you can see that there are people who actually believe that this bullshit slippery slope exists, and why they are so nutty
the reaons these slippery slopes don't exist is of course because people are levelheaded and recognize limits. yet for some bizarre reason you don't seem to be able to see that people would recognize obvious, simple straightforward limits. instead, you propose to me that prosecuting this rare case with a novel interpretation of the law- which happens all the time, will suddenly lead us to corporate fascism
dude, you're a fear-addled kook. god knows how you function in daily life with this level of emotional, irrational fear clouding how you see your society and your legal system functioning
there are level heads out there in the courtroom. really. furthermore, you are not currently someone with a level head. you are someone suffering from paranoia and hysteria on this issue. really. you're quite the hysterical fear-addled fruitcake, if i ever met one
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm glad to see that the federal government has decided that it's a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to violate the TOS by giving false information in registration.
My p0rn site says, "I affirm by clicking on this agreement that I am not a police officer, detective, agent of any government agency or prosecutor, or any kind of investigator, and I will not bring and have no intention of bringing any legal action or complaint against this web site or anyone affiliated with this web site."
So if any anti-p0rn investigator clicks onto my web site, he's violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, by by getting fraudulent unauthorized access to my computer, and the U.S. Attorney's Office will prosecute him or her.
...guilty of WHAT? Being a bitch? I agree. Is being a callous, uncaring bitch now a crime? I feel bad for the girl, but seriously... she killed herself over an Internet "boyfriend". Where the hell were her parents, and why didn't anyone have any clue she was unstable enough to kill herself over something as stupid as that? She was failed in multiple ways, and people are just blaming the straw that broke the camels back, and not paying attention to everything else that was there beforehand.
Really, would you want going against the TOS of a website (which is what she's basically being charged with) to actually count as a felony? Does that not seem horribly stupid to you?
BTW, you're a fucking retard. Go kill yourself. (whoops, better take that back... if you do, I might be brought up on felony charges).
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I agree with you, but telling someone to wrap someone up in a sheet and then beat them isn't the same thing as telling them to defend themselves when attacked.
If someone hits me, I defend myself. It's simply the way I was raised and the way I raise my kids. I don't tell them to go out and instigate a fight with the bully to prove a point though.
Violence has nothing to do with my comments at all.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
"Tortured"? You say it like she tied the girl up to the computer and forced her to communicate.
Her parents failed her. Her friends failed her. This woman was a horrible bitch, but that's all she's guilty of. That girl decided to take her own life because she was very, very unstable, and no one around her apparently cared enough to step in until it was too late. And now we cry foul?
Besides, did you even look at what she was charged with? Basically, violating the terms of service of MySpace is being conflated as the same thing as "unauthorized use of a computer system" or "hacking". A fucking felony. Do you follow the TOS of every single site you visit? And would you agree that anyone who doesn't follow the TOS is guilty of a felony?
The woman who did this was a horrible bitch, no question. But people need to take some fucking personal responsibility. There are mean people out there. Fact of life. Most of us learn to deal with it. Apparently, no one taught this girl how to. That's not the fault of the Internet "boyfriend".
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
you put your faith in the law like it were dead computer code, rather than a living embodiment of a humane understanding of justice
"But stretching a loosely-related law with an unheard-of interpretation so that you can punish the woman for X when really you want to get her for Y, and then denying that logically you would have to punish otehrs who did X (but who didn't do Y), is advocating tyrany."
its advocating justice. you know, that silly concept that motivates the construction of a set of laws in the first place?
pffffffffffft
you don't get it. where it=understanding the nature of your society or the human beings around it. in fact, you simply don't care. you don't want to think about the idea of justice here, you don't care about who is hurt, or what is right or wrong. you want the law to execute like a cold program, damned if it is unideal, damned if it needs adjusting
luckily for you, you simply don't understand how things really work
the law is a living breathing entity. new law is constantly being written like this, constantly being pruned for misinterpretation, and constantly shifting and mutating as society's values shift and change
this being the truth about the law you live under, and assuming you can concieve of this truth about the law of the land you live in, one wonders why you aren't cowering under a table in fear right now. what a fruitcake. you call the fact that the law is a living changing thing a form of tyranny! amazing...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i am a level 25 Demagog Troll, HP 59. use your +5 vorpal sword of anonymous douchebaggery to slay me and save slashdot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But aside from that, if this becomes a precedent to enact the death penalty on trolls? Good.
As for the mother? She thought this was just a normal "my life is over" teenage tantrum, she couldn't know that her daughter was the victim of concerted emotional abuse inflicted by an team lead by an adult, she's a victim as well, not a co-conspirator.
You can't take the sky from me...
Go fuck a goat.
If you did, should I then be convicted of bestiality?
The woman is not a nice person, no question. But you really need some perspective. It's nice to feel outraged, but when that outrage starts making it a felony to just fail to abide by somebody's random terms of service on their website? That'll fuck over society as a whole. Hard. And fails to assign the blame on the parents and the people who cared about that girl, because they didn't step in before this happened. Shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. Suicide is VERY rarely a spur of the moment decision. It's something that brews for a long time, building on lots of other emotional problems that can't be surmounted. Her family and friends failed her by not providing her the tools she needed to deal with her problems. Her family's failure is NOT a reason to charge a jackass with being... well, a jackass.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
it is very much in the interest of justice to find this person's real identity. but if due to fear and hysteria you believe this means we will now all live under big brother, then go hide in your basement and don't talk to anyone. or, accept the notion that the law and your society is not dangling by a thread to fall into corporate fascism, or whatever your parnaoid schizophrenic fantasies are about the implications of this case. there are people out there with level heads who understand the obvious limits here. really. you're not one of those people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
there are also a lot of fear addled paranoid schizophrenics posting on slashdot who believe their society is dangling by a thread from falling into corporate fascism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As a 30yr old male (and slashdot reader), if I were to create a fake 14yr old account on myspace and chat it up with a 13 yr old girl and eventually become her "boyfriend" online. You can bet your ass I'd be thrown in jail in a heartbeat..
So the 14 yr old boy's account was fake and created by a 38 yr old adult. The fact that that adult is a woman should not matter. She created that account with the intention of having an intimate relationship with a minor.
Anyone care to comment?
That girl could always walk away from the keyboard. There can be no torture without force. Raping and preying on kids sexually is a forceful act, one that requires actual action, rather than communication.
Lori Drew is a horrible bitch, but she's not guilty of the crime they're charging her with. She's not a hacker because she violated MySpace's TOS. If she is, then half the people using MySpace are felons.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Actually, she is. The only charge that she's got is that she didn't follow the MySpace TOS.
She did a horrible thing, but do you really think that not following the TOS should be a felony? And if you do, are you fucking retarded?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Yes, she deserves to be the case that makes violating the MySpace TOS (and by extension, ANY website TOS) a felony.
Sounds a little stupid when you think about it, eh? She's a horrible, petty, malicious bitch. No question about it. But think about what you're ACTUALLY asking to have done.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
No, manipulating children makes you responsible.
The fact that there were more then one person in on this makes it a conspiracy.
So if I convinced by daughter to climb onto our roof when a hurricane is coming I won't be liable for her death? I mean I didn't blow here off the roof.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If this succeeds, I do think it will set a bad precedent. Criminal law should not be used to enforce a TOS. The Myspace part of it should be strictly a civil matter.
That said, I think this woman Drew needs to be charged. This wasn't a case of two kids being mean to eachother, or flaming someone on Slashdot. It was an adult preying on a child, an especially vulnerable one at that. I think this is a clear case of child abuse. I have no idea why she isn't being charged with that.
Another important issue is that the women KNEW this girl had emotional issue, and was suicidal.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"the girl who committed suicide after receiving upsetting MySpace messages from someone she perceived to be her boyfriend" If a myspace message causes you to kill yourself, I'm guessing that you were not destine to be a rocket scientist or brain surgeon. The parents should thank the woman for relieving them of this overly emotional burden.
-Cnik
In which case, The Art of War applies, and all is fair.
You can't take the sky from me...
these are the desperate maneuvers of a fading corporate enterprise. not the burgeoning reality of a corporate fascism
it is pretty easy to defeat anyone who depends upon the spectre of the slippery slope in the realm of logic and reason. by its very nature, the idea of the slippery slope depends upon fear and hysteria to support its notions. that we are going to slide to some vast new legal or social reality, completely without any recourse or resistance, simply because of some little tweak here or there. its complete bullshit. its demagoguery, propaganda
logic and reason are always the enemy of the concept of the slippery slope, and anyone who depends upon the notion of the slippery slope in their arguments is someone you thereby automatically identify as someone who is afraid and hysterical and is not thinking clearly
"Do you get it yet? I don't live in daily fear, I just see where this is likely to lead and I don't like it. I'm hardly paralyzed and not at all hysterical."
your words on the topic of the implications of this myspace case are very much the definition of fear-based thinking. your thinking is paralyzed and you are in fact hysterical about the implications of the case
the slippery slope doesn't exist. in any argument. on any topic. its propaganda
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As I stated previously, the fact that the focus is all on her violating MySpace's TOS is, IMO, stupid. What they should be focused on is the fact that she purposefully sought out and preyed on a child.
So, if instead of the extreme example of attempting to solicit actual sex is substituted for merely engaging in sexual discussion with a minor, would you agree to the similarities? A person who uses the internet to specifically seek out children with the purposes of engaging in sexual discussions with them is considered a sexual predator and is charged with criminal acts. True, those children could merely stop chatting at any time (and one wonders where the girl's parents were during this entire episode that it was allowed to escalate so terribly out of control), just as this girl could have, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the woman (if it was her) specifically sought out a minor and, using lies and false representation, attempted (and succeeded!) to torture and manipulate her into a state of emotional distress.
To use another slightly extreme example of why I think what you say has less validity, if a 40-year-old ran around in a trench coat flashing a junior high school, should that person not be served criminal charges merely because the kids could have "looked away"? The fact that the victim could have severed the contact (assuming that they were able to be aware of what was happening, which did not seem to be the case with the girl in question - as the perpetrator purposefully lied and manipulated her to keep her from realizing the tactics being used to torture and torment her and thereby allow said perpetrator to continue said acts) does not make them any less of a victim - or the person who committed the acts any less accountable.
Another extreme example - a woman who is beaten by her husband. It is true that she could leave the relationship at any time - she could reach out, get help, etc. However, due usually to the emotional and mental manipulation (similar to the case), the woman is made to feel as if she should not or could not receive the help she needs. Her husband uses these tactics so that he may continue his abuse of her, just like the perpetrator in the case used the fake "relationship" to keep the girl in communication and to continue the tormenting. Is the husband not to be held accountable because the wife could have left? Should we excuse this behavior because the victim "brought it on themselves" by not seeking aid?
Obviously, neither of my examples are exactly like the case - and they are a bit on the extreme side - but they illustrate why this woman should be facing criminal charges for her treatment of the girl. As stated previously and again at the beginning of this reply, the fact that they are focusing on the supposed "hacking" is just stupid. They should be focusing on the willful and deliberate preying on a 13-year-old by a 40-something-year-old which then led to not only the tormenting and torturing of said girl, but ultimately to her death. And in that, the authorities were perfectly right, IMO, to arrest the person they had evidence had done the crime.
"Does bouncing count?" - Silk, Magician's Gambit by David Eddings
WHAT crime? What are you charging her with? Being a bitch?
The ONLY thing they're charging her with is computer misuse, hacking via ignoring a TOS.
I don't disagree that she shouldn't be punished. I DO disagree with HOW they're trying to punish her. It's a slippery slope, and you're all running on emotional lynchmob energy, rather than thinking about how much damage this would do if if actually went through. I frankly think the girl's parents needed to step in a lot sooner, and that she needed help, counseling and probably forbidden from using the Internet unsupervised given her fragile emotional state. Lori was a bitch for taking advantage of that, but she is by far not the only one to blame.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
That woman impersonated a 13yo boy and pretended to be in a relationship with the girl. I'm really surprised that they didn't try making a case against her using the laws regarding sexual predators on the net. She deserves the hell that comes with being a registered sex offender.
DONT PANIC
live with it
uh wait.. ooops..
I think MySpace will argue losses from this, it was heavily covered in the media, and now parents block the site more than before.
Actually, if I can show enough evidence that the day being Friday hurts me, and it's your fault, it's not frivolous. It would have standing.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
i identified the concept of the slippery slope as a false construct, one based on fear
you reply that therefore, justice doesn't exist
(scratches head)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Okay, as I've now stated 4 times, I think that the fact that the main charge has to deal with MySpace's TOS is stupid! It should be a criminal charge regarding intentionally doing extreme emotional damage to a child - with some added conspiracy to commit added for both the main perpetrator and the person who said they were in on it (I believe her name was Gills, if I remember the article correctly). I haven't seen any indication that the girl was emotionally unstable, although I have only read the main article. I do, however, wonder why the girl's parents didn't question what was going on when their daughter must have gotten extremely depressed and/or exhibited other negative emotions prior to her suicide. You seem to imply with this:
WHAT crime? What are you charging her with? Being a bitch? That there is nothing that the woman should be charged with, even though you say you agree that she should be punished. My original reply was to the idea that she should be charged at all.So, to state again what I have stated before I do not agree with the attorney's decision to charge the woman with computer-related violations. Incidentally, what they are charging her with is not specifically hacking. It is merely the charge most often levied at hackers. Small difference, but important. From what I can tell, they're basically charging her with entering into an agreement electronically by agreeing to the TOS and then willfully violated that agreement. Which she did. You can place the argument that "everyone does it" but, sorry, it just doesn't fly in a court of law. Whenever you click "okay" to those EULA or TOS agreements, you are entering into a legally binding contract that you will abide by the things contained therein. Granted, most times it won't really matter if you lie about your hair color on MySpace or violate another EULA or TOS - the most you're likely to get is a brick wall when you call their tech support and try to get help after having committed a violation that caused a problem. But you can't start saying that a woman who did such should not be charged as such. That's silly.
And if you don't agree with the EULA or TOS, why, you always have the option to walk away and not use that service/program. Just like you stated the girl could have walked away at any time and disengaged from the conversation. We all have that choice.
So, the charges against her you might see as a "slippery slope" but I see as a natural outcome of all those agreements you click "okay" to without even reading. And while I do think that it was stupid to charge her with something that first off is a minor infraction compared to what she actually did and will only get her a max of 5 years per charge, I do not say that the charge is superfluous either.
You may feel that many of us are running on "emotional lynchmob energy" but it seems to me much more likely that those who are campaigning against such a charge are running on the equally knee-jerk emotion which relates to the idea of anything computer-related being persecuted. It is an emotion that seems to be uniquely /. related, but it comes up often whenever there is a court-case involving some sort of computer charge. And in this case it seems completely unfounded. You may not like the fact that this is in fact a case that has every legal basis for going through, but by reading through the article and examining the actual charges I don't think that anyone could say that the charges are unfounded.
"Does bouncing count?" - Silk, Magician's Gambit by David Eddings
If your daughter is thirteen years old, she should have a pretty decent concept of the consequences involved. Thus, it would be purely her fault that she climbed up onto the roof and was blown off. You didn't put her on the roof, you didn't aid her in getting up onto the roof, you didn't push her from the roof or anything else. You had no fault in it, because an idle suggestion should not equate to murder or any other such intention.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
A thirteen year old is dead because of an adult plain and simple. many could argue that the girl had a choice, but too me it is clear that the girl was pushed over the edge, and the pusher was an adult. The adult acted no different than a person telling a child it's ok for you to run away with me, or to shoplift in the store, the adult aided the child into a decision that had dire consequences. If anything, the charges should of been aiding abetting a juvenile, and second degree manslaughter. Plus the falsely creation of a account proves that she knew she was committing a crime in my opinion. If she did not feel anything was wrong with it then why did she go out of her way to hide? One person (an employee) open the door up, and said this woman was responsible for a child committing suicide. In back articles the evidence stated that the woman whom did the crime laughed and said the kid got what she deserved. Who in their right mind could feel that way about a child? Throw the book at this woman she had no heart during the crime and she is only sorry now because she got caught. I don't feel for her one bit. Because her family also was involved in this monstrosity, I don't feel sorry for them either, the whole family is heartless they all deserve prison time. because none of them came forward, or even tried to stop the mother. In several back articles several of the family members eventually knew what was going on. I am not sure if this part is true or not, but if it is they all should be locked up.
http://meganhaditcoming.blogspot.com/
This is a blog that is about to be taken down and it described why the woman did what she did. I don't think that this case is as black and white as some people think.
I'm ok with it being illegal to have your feelings hurt -- just not illegal to hurt someone's feelings.
being a whinging, cry-baby idiot should be a crime... and it should be painful.
I'm a recall coordinator. My job is to apply the formula. It's a story problem.
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 miles per hour. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: do we initiate a recall?
Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X... If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
You see nothing inherently criminal in a woman who is in her late 40s using knowledge of her neighbor with a known history of depression and a previous suicide attempt who is 13?
She pretended to be a 13 year old boy to build up the 13 year old girl and then while in character proceeded to say how much she as the 13 year old boy liked the girl and thought she was attractive and wanted to meet. After all that build up just come out and literally say that she's not attractive and that the world would be better off without her?
If it was another 13 year old kid doing this you would have a point but this is an adult who clearly understood the implications of the game she was playing. The only problem is that the contempt she held for the neighbor because of a teenage slight against her daughter made her blind to the possibility that the girl would actually go through with it.
I'll agree there is no specific law about this but you can't say that the life was lost because of the actions of the thirteen year old girl alone. You don't know that should would have killed herself without encouragement. Let us not forget that suicide is itself a crime and the 40+ woman was clearly an accessory to it. In that context conspiracy sure makes sense to me, perhaps you can shed some additional light on why you have a hard time believing it?
As I read TFA, she's being charged with "accessing protected computers without authorization" which is not the same as "violating the TOS", as it would still be a crime if there were no TOS to violate. Ask Kevin Mitnick whether there's already case law of someone going to jail for this crime.
The fact that she is alleged to have done this to "get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl" -- to commit an assault, basically-- would also be grounds for a judge to hand out a harsher penalty on conviction, as there's ample case law to show that committing a crime to aid another crime is worse than committing one for its own sake. And of course, if it can be proven that the commission of these crimes -- the illegal access to the computer, and/or the asssault -- resulted in the death of the victim, opens up the possibility of manslaughter charges.
The prosecutor's problem is going to proving the "accessing computers without authorization", as it does look like she didn't hack the computers, just violated her TOS, as you're stating. In that case, she'll be found not guilty. Of course she could still be found guilty of the assault, and possibly even guilty of manslaughter charges if any were brought.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
If we could just get everyone that uses MySpace to commit suicide . . . Control that crazy world population, boost economies (well for undertakers at least), surplus of jobs, 100B less ugly web pages, the interwebz pipes able to breath again from not being clogged with bullshit.... Ah... only if...
What I find interesting is that if this woman had scammed this girl to manipulate her out of her money, it would be a clear-cut case of fraud, and she would likely face criminal charges.
Instead, she scammed her out of her *life*, and may not have to suffer *any* criminal consequences.
Fortunately, a civil case could almost certainly be brought against her, I can't imagine that any jury in the world would let her off without some judgement against her.
Is she criminally responsible? No, probably not, in the eyes of the law. And unfortunately, it would be difficult to define a law to protect someone in a case like this. Does that absolve her of *any* responsibility for her actions? Hell no. Mob justice would be too good for her.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Unfortunately, this seems to be a very complicated matter due to the fact that it seems bolth people are at fault. The woman had no business doing what she did, but the girl should have never taken that message so seriously. It's just a sad story of how obsessive some of the worst websites ever invented become for kids who can't find a better use for the Internet.
This lady clearly had some issues if she was pretending to be a teenager looking for a girl online, but can she really be blamed? It's not like she told the girl exactly what to do. This is just an example of why you really need to be careful online, think before you post, and try not to make the Internet your entire life (I'm a computer geek, and even I wouldn't be that obsessed with the Internet)!
I don't see any crime this woman committed, except _maybe_, if they have a good lawyer, stalking.
But she should have known not to do what she did. However, the girl who killed herself is equally as responsible. Clearly she had some issues as well...
The most tragic thing here though is that this poor girl's story will be told again and again on TV, in Congress, on Fox News, and turned into an example of why we need Internet censorship and suppression by the politicians.
Aw, c'mon. Troll?
My point was serious: The outside world contains people who are mean. Whether they come from real actual asshole teenagers or asshole adults pretending to be teenagers, any responsible parent or netadmin should take it as inevitable that spoofed packets and mean messages are going to arrive.
If you're going to go running an exploitable service such as a teenage girl's heart on an open connection, then you should make damn sure her inputs have been sanitized, and that malformed data isn't going to crash her.
At the very least you should source-verify anything coming from an untrusted host.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Fuck no... more legislation is not what the country needs.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Thousands.
What legal precautions should I take the next time I break up with someone to make sure that they don't decide to kill themselves and make me a murderer?
Is it enough if I get them to sign a written promise not to end it all, or do I have to get it notarized?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
that's exactly what justice is
and?
the only thing that needs explaining is what you think that aspect of justice has to do with a slippery slope
one can assume you're at a loss for words because you don't know what the hell you are talking about
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
She has been charged with Fraud under The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. She is not charged with murder. It isn't lying about her name that is the problem, it's the fact that she did it for the reason that she did. Still, it would have been better to get her on child abuse charges. She's good as confessed to it and she's absolutely guilty.
Are you retarded? Or just trolling?
Seriously, this goes above and beyond any attempt I could make at a sophisticated response.
THE GIRL FUCKING KILLED HERSELF!!!
It doesn't matter what you perceive as anything she could have done, there's an old adage: Let the punishment FIT the crime. What had she done that required her to be manipulated into suicide?
Her "friend" and her "friend's mother" knew she was mentally emotionally unstable, and had not only the choice not to pursue their course of action, but the choice to stop it when (or if) they realized they were going too far.
For lack of a better basis for comparison, in a manner that might get through that microcephalic cranium of yours (fuck it, I have karma to burn baby):
It's like shooting everyone in the family, and burning down the house of a kid who egged your house on Halloween.
That is the extent of it. Even if someone is gossiping behind your back, you do NOT have the right to harass them to the point of suicide! What the hell do you think this is? A live action version of Heathers?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
You're correct on this. She and her family have been generally shunned by their community as a result of this. I think that sucks for the family, but I also think it's exactly the right punishment for the crime. Rather than dragging this into the courts, the local community has demonstrated that this is unacceptable behavior. This reinforces the mores of the community that purposefully tormenting a teenager is wrong, even if there isn't a law against it.
I feel sorry for the family members, and hope they disown this evil bitch and leave her to rot in the mess she created for herself.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
There is a thing called age of consent. A child of 13, in most jurisdictions, is not considered an adult and unable to give consent. This also is why children under the age of consent are not suitable as sexual partners for adults, btw. If this action were sexual in nature, it would be rape - pure ad simple. This was, for lack of a better term, emotional rape. At the very least, it's emotional abuse.
Additionally, as any adult knows (and recent studies have shown), teenagers are emotionally young and immature and subject to extreme emotional swings. We give too much credit to young teens that we think are our emotional equivalents. They aren't.
What we have here is a 13 year old girl, allegedly known to be suicidal, who is allegedly manipulated by an ADULT for the purpose of causing extreme emotional distress in that child.
A suicidal and emotionally unstable child can not handle the stresses the person allegedly put upon her and is not responsible for her actions.
So...stop blaming the victim - Stop assuming that a child can rationally understand the ramifications of acting upon their wildly swinging emotions. They most likely don't or can't.
The whole lot of people who took these actions against this young teenager need to be taught a lesson. The ring leader should not only go to jail for her actions but should also lose everything in a civil lawsuit. In my mind, anyone who could do this to a child is no better than the sexual predators who prey on children. I'd like to think the prison population will think so also.
Offtopic as hell, but I haven't read Eddings in years. Then, rather randomly, yesterday I thought of that exact scene (from your sig) from Magician's Gambit. Just that one scene. Then today I read your sig. Quite strange.
Anon to preserve mods - one for this comment.
Don't forget that some states still have "felony murder" laws. This means that you're accountable for first degree murder for any death that occurs in proximity to any felony. The original intent was to make all hands bloody -- you couldn't plan and execute a robbery and then plead ignorance when your partner deliberately kills somebody, but it's been used to cover things like heart attacks in victims and even onlookers. It's been used in cases where another of the criminals died, e.g., when a victim fought back.
A notorious case happened in Denver about a decade ago. A woman asked some acquaintances to help her get her stuff out of her old apartment. One small details -- she had already moved out so it was B&E even if the was recovering her own property. A felony.
Skip forward about an hour. She's in a car being chased down the interstate by police. She doesn't really know the driver -- think acquaintance of acquaintance. We don't know if she would have stopped for the cops (although she claimed so later).
Skip forwards a little bit further. She's in custody while the driver is holed up outside an apartment complex. The guy kills a cop before being killed himself.
She goes on trial for first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances (the death of the cop). Her defense is that she was literally in police custody at the time. But the felony murder law is clear and she was sentence to life in prison without parole.
IIRC she had exhausted her appeals and it was looking like she would be serving life, but some detail came up that allowed the courts to readdress the issue. I can't remember if she's permanently out now or just awaiting a new trial, but she's already spent more time in prison than many conventional murderers.
What this woman did was absolutely horrible.
But is she responsible for what the girl did? No.
If you are going to charge her with conspiracy, how about charging the parents for negligence as well? I mean really, what responsible parent allows his or her emotionally distrubed/depressed child to go on a site like MySpace unmonitored? It could've easily been a sexual predator she was speaking with rather than just a bitter neighbor down the street.
If you did, should I then be convicted of bestiality?
The woman is not a nice person, no question. But you really need some perspective. It's nice to feel outraged, but when that outrage starts making it a felony to just fail to abide by somebody's random terms of service on their website? That'll fuck over society as a whole. Hard. And fails to assign the blame on the parents and the people who cared about that girl, because they didn't step in before this happened. Shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. Suicide is VERY rarely a spur of the moment decision. It's something that brews for a long time, building on lots of other emotional problems that can't be surmounted. Her family and friends failed her by not providing her the tools she needed to deal with her problems. Her family's failure is NOT a reason to charge a jackass with being... well, a jackass. First, I believe you could be liable if you told a 10-yr-old child to go fuck a goat and he did. IANAL, so I don't know what law you'd be breaking, but there are laws to protect children from predators like this lady. You can't give a kid a cigarette. You can't give a kid a beer. You can't give a kid drugs, illegal or not. I would guess that it's safe to assume that you can't tell a kid to kill herself.
This isn't about terms of service. It's about an adult acquiring a false persona in order to form a romantic relationship with a little girl for the sole purpose of hurting that child. Unfortunately, it worked much better than she anticipated!
IMHO, this falls under the same category as pulling up your van to the local elementary school and telling a little kid, "I'm a friend of your mother and she asked me to come pick you up." This could also fall under "To Catch a Predator" since she did have a "romantic" relationship with this kid, even though it wasn't sexual.
Granted, this girl had issues beyond what the old bitch did, but the old bitch was the straw that broke the camel's back. That makes her liable. It would not be as bad if she just played the boyfriend and dumped her, but she literally told the girl "the world would be a better place without you". She practically told the girl to kill herself which is exactly what happened. I also have a feeling that suicide was discussed between these two as her comment is not the kind of thing you just bring up at random (pure speculation, of course). It would be interesting to see if any chat logs were kept.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Once in a while I resume reading Slashdot. And then I get comments like yours that make me realize why I stop reading and posting there. Did you read my comment? Did I say anything about who is right and who is wrong? I stated that there was a blog where the mom posted her side of the story. Is it true? I don't know. Is it false? I don't know.
The Judge summarily dismissed the case, dismissing rumors that a band of individuals wearing Guy Fawkes masks had anything to do with his decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761573003
http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0212_040212_friday13.html
Good luck with that line of reasoning, by the way.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Thank god you can't be executed simply for being a bitch (or an asshole, or a cocksucker, or a genuinely rotten curmudgeon...)
:)
This is morally suspect, but legally it should've stayed out of the criminal courts... but never underestimate the power of assholes who like to shift blame.
Tragic? Yes... but not in the same manner as everyone's thinking...
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Justice is not served by pretending the laws mean whatever you want them to mean in each given instance.
Certainly the laws can change; it is not like "dead code". However, you can't convict someone for an act they commit before you pass the law that makes it illegal. We have a specific rule for that in the Constitution.
Whether you understand this fact or not, what you are advocating is a form of mob rule that would be quickly corrupted by those in power into tyrrany.
I'm not the one who doesn't get it in this exchange.
you say a life, i say nothing of value.
There I said it. Now if someone goes and dies, am I now responsible?
I cannot believe someone can be held responsible for a death that they did not cause directly - ie shooting someone, running them down with a car, etc. Just because some idiot offs themselves after being made fun of or insulted doesn't mean the bully should be charged with murder. Yes they were ethically a big prick but not a damn murderer. The precedent this could set is horribly scary. No wonder people sue gun manufactures or car manufacturers and not the individual who used the guns, etc. Where is personal responsibility in this world!?!!!?? It seems like it is never our fault but someone elses. HOW SAD!!!!!!
From what I have heard, many of the exchanges between the girl and 'Josh' were strongly sexual in nature. An adult, mis-representing herself as a teen in order to engage in sexually-explicit communication with a minor.
HOLD ON, you say? those are meant for sexual predators!
Hmm. Sexual predators = misrepresenting themselves in order to use sexuality to do serious harm to a child.
This woman = misrepresenting herself in order to use (in part) sexuality to do serious harm to a child.
Well within the letter of the law. Skirting the intent of it, but still inside, IMHO. The fact that the harm she intended was not sexual in nature shouldn't really matter.
Yeah, reading this I can't support the indictment for violation of terms of service for unauthorized use: though I think it might be technically justified the implications of it are odious.
I do think that the bulk of the punishment should be social in this case... the woman is a scumbag, and should be a pariah. In particular if we could find a way to make life unlivable for her, so that she made the choice to take her own life, I would be happy to participate in it and encourage the activity in any legal way.
demi
Loss of reputation != actual financial damages.
Myspace should sue the woman in civil court rather than relying on the law to throw her in jail.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
http://www.ncvc.org/src/main.aspx?dbID=DB_Missouri252
That page's definitions indicate at least a class A misdemeanor for stalking.
The other question is, depending on the content of their correspondence there may be a sex offense involved (if the adult was soliciting sexual knowledge or simulating a sexual interest in the victim, which seems likely given that the victim apparently felt intimate enough with the stalker to develop such emotional attachment).
In the old world before the age of the internets it would be entirely appropriate for someone who persuaded another to kill themselves to be treated as having committed a criminal act.
In fact it is still highly illegal in real life to assist someone to kill themselves with no suggestion of persuasion - you cannot hand a terminally ill person a bottle of pills to kill themselves with at a time of their choosing. Instead you have to chain the sick person up and watch gleefully as the tumor eats their brain and crushes every nerve in their bones so that they die in excruciating agony with no control over their bowels or bladder and deprived of vision, speech and movement die in appalling isolation. Thats how much we and the law despise assisting the suicide of another apparently.
So should the act of posting stuff on the internets be subject to legal scrutiny and potential criminal judgment? Well, I don't know. The cut and paste world where we can all see photos of our friend committing illegal acts on Facebook, bebo et-al may eventually come to be judged by different rules from real life. But right now the hatred that ensures that terminally ill people are crucified is almost certainly going to come down hard on anyone messing about online.
If you want to have rational freedom on the internets then you are going to have to get it in the real world too.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
...and yet you believe her when she said she did it?
When I've seen situations like this on TV, the lawyers usually discount *everything* they say, and just use the evidence. That seems to be more reasonable to me than to only believe some things they say.
Max.
Existentialism at it's finest!
Thank you for putting this information more into context for me. I didn't know just how culpably stupid Ms.Drew is.
I still think this case belongs in a civil court, not a criminal one, unless a more appropriate statute can be found to charge her with.
Now ask yourself this question: How would you feel if a neighbor was able to drive your child/disabled parent/S.O to suicide and was told that no crime had been committed.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Just in case you are serious, I'll state up front that I'm infavor of assisted suicides. A person who is of sound mind, if not body, should have the ability to pick the time and place of their exit with dignity. This is completely different from a teenager killing them self.
First off, the girl was 13, well under the age of legal adulthood. Secondly, assisted suicide is, or should be, a medical procedure. If that's the line you want to draw, then the woman should be charged with medical malpractice, for performing a medical procedure without informed consent, along side practicing without a license, misrepresentation, and a host of other crimes that I'm pretty sure will have a harsher sentence.
Remember, all the woman is getting charged with is computer crimes, misrepresentation of identity and posing as a minor, violation of MySpace's TOS, and such. She isn't getting charged with murder, though it seems many people would like to see her charged with it.
This then comes down to intent. Did Lori Drew intend to commit a crime or other harm by violating the TOS? Lori Drew 'allegedly' created Josh Evans and sought out Megan Meier after Drew's daughter and Megan Meier had had a fight. How could this not be intended to cause emotional harm?
If this is proven in a Federal Court, then it is immediate ammunition for the Meier family to begin a Wrongful Death lawsuit against Lori Drew and her co-conspirators.
I hate to say it, but I think we as a society really need to rethink our whole culture. Just thinking about kids on those medications, like for depression and ADD is terrifying. You are not yourself on those drugs. Its one (bad) thing if adults want to do drugs to change themselves to be something they are not, but to force that on a defenseless child so they will be âoesuccessfulâ in school strikes me as morally wrong. Taking that medication can make you less tired and able to function, but that also means functional enough to kill yourself.
A grand Jury has to return an indictment before a trial can be scheduled.
The process basically goes like this. A person is arrested. The DA decided whether or not to press charges. This generally has to happen within 24-48 hours or the person is released from jail.
Once the DA decides to press charges, he has to get an indictment from a grand jury. The grand jury basically determines whether the prosecutor has enough evidence to proceed to trial. If the prosecutor does not get an indictment from the grand jury, he cannot take the case to trial.
I think it's just a method of preventing malicious litigation from the D.A.'s office.
However, I'm not a lawyer. I got most of this from Law & Order reruns, so take it with a grain of salt.
actually, unless you push them off, you'll probably be charged with manslaughter or negligent homicide. murder generally requires preconceived intent.
Am I the only one who doesn't really care what this woman said to the child?
She's a 49 year old woman, creating a fake identity to hold romantic conversations with and seduce a minor... Isn't there one of those freedom-depriving US censorship/"think of the children" laws that could be levied against her just for that part?
What would have happened if this was a 49 year old guy pretending to be this girl's boyfriend?! I'd imagine that would be all over Dateline NBC and we'd be up in arms over the precedent it would set.
(On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog^H^H^H murderous, demented 49 y/o woman.)
(ps - Captcha: "tempts")
Your comment was plainly "Go to a website that said she deserved it for the rest of the story". Shit, the website was NAMED that.
If the mom was so innocent, then why would she name the blogspot site "Megan had it coming"?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
We are all of us self-absorbed hypocrites who ignore or dismiss uncomfortable parts of our reality because we must believe in accountability to have order in society and discourage parasitism. When the lines between personal responsibility, moral failings and mental health get blurred, people around the problematic person can fail badly. Can we blame them?
You can't empathize with an emotion you have never felt. How many of you would empathize with someone who truly enjoys torturing and killing babies? How about someone who truly enjoys and fullfills a need by slapping his wife occasionally? Just a few slaps here and then, no hospital visits..ya know, is that ok? How about the guy in your work team who spends half his time obsessively reading the news instead of working and earns as much as you?
If you keep going on, at some point, you will reach your personal frontier and start wavering. Everybody does. It's simply a matter of degree. I'll leave you with those cheerful thoughts.
Oh, for the sake of whatever you consider holy. For the sake of sanity, and reasonable discussion (Yes, I am aware this is slashdot. But miracles are possible, right?) I'm going to attept to portray this with only a small measure of the contempt this raises in me. First off, as a bit of background. I'm bipolar, have been for a long time. At the moment, having no health insurance, I'm really not treating it as well as I probably should. I also happen to live in a smallish town, so needless to say my neighbors are not what I'd call... nice. (I routinely get bibles chucked at me, for example.) Also, I've known a lot of very troubled teen girls in my life. (Even had the idiot idea to get involved with a few.) So I at least have some vague idea of the mindset. Now, all that being said, along with me being a gamer, should well make me a dead ringer for a school shooter, no? Considering I'm writing this from home, I highly doubt I've gone out and shot anyone. (And however heartless this may sound, the schools nearest me... well, if any school deserves to be shot up, it's those.) Any person, no matter how badly messed up in the head you are, or what kind of emotional problems you have, have choices. And those choices are yours alone. To say this (admittedly heartless bitch.) is responsible for her suicide, at least in a legal (or moral, even) sense is completely insane. This completely and totally removes any form of responsibility from the girl. This isn't really belittling how heartless of a bitch the instigator was. But, come on, I've had some pretty harsh stuff happen to me. And people I've known have had some even worse stuff happen to them. The most outrageous example of this I have is when a friend of mine was assaulted, badly, and just left her there. I came across her skipping out early, and took her in to the nurse, and the principle, and no one would do anything, for her supposedly making it all up. (They happned to be star football players, which I think was the more pressing reason.). Of course, these were people I knew for a fact to be violent. If the law won't get involved in a horrible case like that, (And this was not an isolated incident.) but it will in the case of some suburban... girl, getting messed with emotionally, after her own suicide... Well, my faith in humanity wasn't doing well beforehand, but this is a grevious blow. (By the way, she happned to be rather poor, living in a bad apartment next to mine, and her family probably wasn't what I'd call healthy. She overdosed a week later.) In fact, I take exception to this even being labeled a "tragedy". It cheapens the term immesurably. What is happening in China, and Myanmar, that is a tragedy. Parts of the city I live near (In the midwest, but not what's normally considered a "major city") being a complete warzone. That, is a tragedy. Children in africa dying of preventable and treatable diseases, and starvation, that's a tragedy. Some suburban wimp that killed herself because she couldn't handle someone fucking with her? Please. In slashdot terms... fuck that. This does not even bear trying to translate into failspeak. She got messed with. Mean, but worse happens, routinely. She hung herself. Woo. Someone who, while a heartless bitch, but little other than that, gets charged with a crime because "OH NOES, A CHILD DIED". Fuck me. Children die every fucking day, for a massive amount of perfectly preventable reasons. This is not a tragedy. This is a wimpy girl, taking the easy way out. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to see here, move along.
I hate being the one to write this, but someone has to. Megan isn't dead because of Lori Drew, or because Megan was 13 going through all that age entails. Megan is dead because she was bipolar.
Sadly, the world can be a cruel place, and bipolars have a harder time dealing with it, sometimes with consequences such as this. Some bipolars lash outwardly, others inwardly. Be glad Megan wasn't male, or this could have ended like Columbine.
The parent's want to blame someone else, and apparently so do most. In all the media stuff I've watched, the parents have avoided using the term bipolar, but used "ADD" and "depression" instead. This tells me the parents were in denial, or feel Megan's memory would have been stigmatized if they told the truth.
Drew would never have been charged if not for Megan's death. Therefore the judge will likely feel compelled to allow Megan's medical, psychiatric, history to be presented as defense evidence. I hope this happens and that Drew is found not guilty. If she is found guilty, the story dies and everyone forgets Megan. CLOSURE.
We don't need closure, we need discussion. We need Megan, and Columbine, and the Omaha mall shooting discussed daily. Why? Because of the underlying cause--psychological disorders.
We need to constantly be aware that people are among us whose minds work differently, and whose personalities are different. Not because they choose to be, but because nature/evolution/God has chosen to make them different.
Until we have a societal mindset of understanding about this, kids and adults will continue to kill others and themselves, be fired from jobs, abuse their spouses and children, get divorced, and all the other negative things that happen to bipolar people with much greater regularity that the population as a whole.
Doctors and medications are *not* a complete solution for this and/or most psychological disorders. We know less about the brain and how it works by many orders of magnitude compared to any other organ. Because of this, all psych meds are still experimental, when you get right down to it. Some work, some don't, some for a while, then they don't, etc. Lithium in its various forms is still the primary medication, and it's been around for 50 years. What does that tell you about the state of brain pharmacology?
I've not committed suicide (obviously), and I've not murdered anyone. Have I contemplated either, of course. Seriously contemplated either? Obviously not. However, I'm 37 years old, never been married, have trouble with relationships, and have lost many good jobs (and crappy ones), never getting any kind of career traction due to all the start/stops.
I've never lost a job due to performance, quite the contrary. I am excellent at what I do, sometimes too good. And it's the "too good" times that cause the pink slip. Why? Because with most employment, working relationships are more important than one's output or contribution. Bipolar folks, especially in a manic state, have tremendous work throughput and problem solving ability. This is one of the reasons I'm good at tech, beyond just being technical to begin with. However, at these times I am the least congenial, and people don't like to be around me. This creates conflict in "team" projects, especially ones that aren't team oriented, but are turned into team projects for idiotic reasons by management. You've all been in similar situations I would assume.
I'll guess I'll close this down, as it could be a book. Two final thoughts I leave you with:
1. Bipolar people can be turned on/off just like a light switch. Well, easier on than off, but it can be triggered externally. Those who figure this out (whether knowing a person is bipolar or not) often take advantage of it in the worst possible way. Just ask my mother about all the "collateral damage" around the house when I was a youngster.
2. Read up on bipolar disorder. If you know someone who is or you suspect may be, help that person mitigat
It is sad what happened to the girl, but creating a law that allows the government to bully people that it desn't like is not an answer to the issue
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe they could try creating a law to this effect. (I'm essentially ripping some ideas/laws off.)
Making it illegal for any adult over age 24 to communicate with minors (under 18) for immoral purposes with intent to inflict (emotional or mental) harm significant enough to cause the minor to commit a criminal act (with the minor as the victim of the act) that causes bodily damage.
Logic...
- Hopefully someone 25+ years old should be mature enough to not engage in such things. (They definitely should know right from wrong, so there is no excuse.)
- Immoral purpose is kind of vague. It would have to be further defined. Perhaps as "for personal pleasure of the adult committing the act". Like toying with someone for entertainment purposes.
- Emotional and mental harm could be determined [even posthumously if there is an online record of the conversations] of the victim. A psychologist/psychiatrist/whatever could make the decision based on what the victim has said or says.
- The minor committing a criminal act against oneself, which happens to cause bodily damage (or attempt thereof), has the following examples: suicide, taking drugs (in an illegal fashion), etc. (sorry, I can't think of too many examples)
The state prosecutor in St. Charles County seems incompetent to me. From http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jFSH4QCAxGXxnVtlJ2iiXpppeGIQD90MBEM81 'St. Charles County, Mo., prosecutor Jack Banas says he reviewed laws related to stalking, harassment and child endangerment and couldn't find statutes allowing him to file charges.' From Wikipedia: "Banas stated that he did not interview Grills because, at the time, she was under psychiatric treatment for the involvement in the Meier case, and does not plan to interview her at a later date. The Meiers criticized the prosecutor's statements, saying that Banas did not interview any party other than the Drews and that Banas is solely relying on the testimony of the Drews." This laziness sounds typical of a lot of cases. He didn't appear to interview anyone other than the alleged perpetrator (not even the co-conspirators, let alone the victim), examined no evidence, issued no subpoenas or warrants to gather more evidence, etc.
The Missouri prosecutors' lack of action is what prompted the federal prosecutors to step in; considering the different focus of federal laws, they probably needed to be a little more creative in their charges (which are "one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress" - the latter being quite specific as to intent and not merely about violating TOS or accessing a computer without authorization for some random purpose).
When an adult bullys and harrasses a 13-year old child under fraudulent pretenses with intent to harm, there are other laws that are applicable, that have nothing to do with computers - the same laws that would apply if the fraud and harrassment were done in person or via mail or telephone should apply over the internet. Even moreso when the adult already knew of at least one previous suicide attempt by the victim as well as her treatment for mental illness, so would have been aware of her fragile emotional state.
That there were two adults working together may add various conspiracy charges to the options (which the feds are doing - wise considering conflicting testimony as to Lori Drew's actual level of involvement, her story evolving with time toward less involvement, compared to her initial statement with police). (Ashley Grills, Lori Drew's 18-year old employee, was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony against Drew. The other conspirator was Drew's daughter, a minor. I do not know what involvement Lori Drew's husband had, other than possibly recommending deleting the account after the suicide, which could itself be a crime, ie. conspiracy to destroy evidence.) From http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/teen-accuses-lori-drew-over-myspace-suicide/2008/04/02/1206850964896.html 'Grills said Drew was the primary instigator behind the fake Josh Evans profile... Grills said she and Drew's daughter told Drew they had gone too far but Drew "was like, it's fine, you know, we can set her up".
I think those saying "grow up, the internet is a dangerous place" (who should grow up, adults posting comments here, or a 13-year old girl??) or "she may be a bitch, but it wasn't illegal" are wrong, as are those who say "it's just bits, it's not real" - to which I say, neither are telephone calls, or the written marks on letters, or the mere air distubances of live conversation. There can be quite a bit of liability (criminal or civil) for such actions.
Adults are also held to a higher level of responsibility when dealing with children than children are with each other, or than adults are when dealing with other adults. And there are a number of laws already on the books emphasizing this. Even if they were both children, or both adults, there might still be applicable statutes, but there are additional ones when a
Shouldn't that alone be enough to get her on child abuse charges - providing the messages can still be accessed?
Okay, I'll bite. In this case, what we have is someone who ran a marketing business trying to mislead someone. Basically, to translate into your analogy, this wasn't some random worm trolling through the networks, this was a months long dedicated attack by a professional blackhat.
A WMI being defined by anyone willing to get an RFID implant? :-)
It was like a foosball table. The parents of the dead girl cut it up with a chainsaw and left it in the driveway of the woman responsible.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Gratifying in the fact that most of those who tortured you, are now working in "lousy" jobs, has no effect on oneself.
First of all, there is no shame in doing those kinds of jobs provided the person enjoys them. It may seem odd to see someone so old to be doing a job that is thought to be done by teenagers, but I figure if someone takes pride in their work, and enjoys every minute of it, good for them.
Second of all, the failure or success of any other individual has no effect on the failure or success of oneself. They are no longer entangled in one's life.
Third, and probably most important, would be this. Those persons who torture and cause others pain, are probably in a state of torture themselves. What kind of person enjoys inflicting pain on others? I would hope that this kind of person would eventually grow up, become a productive citizen of society, and do "good" towards humanity. (In other words, to have them have a rotten life later on, one they don't enjoy, does no one any good because they contribute nothing substantial back to society.)