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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 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.
I think this is automatic when you violate the Terms of Service, which she did by providing false identification when she signed up as this alter ego. Basically, you accessed a system, in this case myspace, which is protect (although minimally) and did so without proper authorization (in the form of your proper identity).
What, so if I register for an email account with "Anonymous Anon" given as my name, I've broken the law? We really do live in a police state.
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.
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.
Turns out I misread TFA. The crime was accessing private data, not using it to "inflict emotional distress", it was just phrased badly in (or my brain was malfunctioning when I read) the article.
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.
Actually, we got into a discussion on this same subject lower down in the replies (I'd say later, but it was two hours earlier or so). The "emotional distress" bit wasn't actually part of the crime, her crimes were using false pretenses to gain access to Myspace (not using her real name) and conspiracy (I believe conspiracy to hurt the girl). So unless you have an elaborate plot to convince me I live under a bridge, feel free to mod me a troll.
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.
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.
It's not as fucked up as you seem to think. I can call myself George Bush & even get credit cards under that name - so long as I am not engaging in fraud. If I try to get a credit card using the name George Bush & the Shrub's SSN, I get hammered with extra crimes listed. Using a pseudonym isn't a crime, using one to commit another crime is.
In this case, a service was provided - the account - in exchange for demographic information used to drive marketing. By screwing with the demographic info, she defrauded the company - reducing the effectiveness of the marketing & increasing their expenses while reducing their return. It's basic fraud, obtaining services under false pretenses - I'm not sure why they are using hacking laws instead of fraud/wirefraud ones.
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.
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.
Only if your motivation for the layoff was to wreck your employee's life. Which is not the motivation behind layoffs, it's to keep the business a going concern by reducing overhead.
A more apt comparison would be the boss who makes an employee's life a living hell, driving him to quit, then actively prevents him from getting a new job, leading to the scenario you described. In that case, I'd think there probably would be civil remedies to the former employee's survivors.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
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.
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
You say that as a joke, but she if she was as fucked in the head as everyone is saying, then let me ask a few questions:
1.) Why was she on the internet unsupervised?
2.) If she had such debilitating depression, was she seeing a therepist?
3.) If it had been a "real" boy would this have even made the local news?
There is a war going on for your mind.
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.
"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
A big difference here is that the efforts of the women (Drew and Grills) were targeted at one person, and were designed to hurt and deceive. Whether that's criminal or not may be debatable. Girls in the 11-to-15 age range go through hell emotionally, hormonally, socially, etc, and each of these factors magnifies the others. What may appear to be drama and hyperbole to adults is often very real in the mind of a young teenager. I never really realized that until I had a teenage daughter, and I can say that when she was at that age, I did notice that the online world (AIM, mostly)seemed to be a trigger that brought out the worst in her. The argument that Megan and her mother had is very similar to ones my wife and I had with our daughter. I am convinced that the same issues crop up with most teenage girls and their parents.
... ]
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Drew and Grills should have known better. They were once adolescent girls, (at 19, Grills might arguably still be one) who now as adults are morally required to take the high road. Solution? Dunno.
[Starting rant; invoking wishful_thinking()
Revoke their adulthood. Driver's license? Gone. Checking account? Get a legal guardian to approve your expenditures. Car loan? Get a cosigner. Set a curfew. Make them ride a schoolbus every day. At work, make them raise their hand and get a hall pass before they go to the bathroom. Voting? Drinking? Smoking? Forget it. Not mature enough. Make them write 10,000-word essays about being nice to others. Make them fill a blackboard with "I will not torment vulnerable teens online" hundreds of times. Daily. After they spend sufficient time slogging through 'childhood', maybe they'll someday be worthy of adult status.
[End rant; invoking return_to_reality()
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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
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.
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"
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
Good points. Unfortunately, you are confused since Lori Drew didn't send the famous "the world would be better without you" message. In fact, she didn't:
1) create the account
2) send a majority of the messages
3) "tell" her to kill herself.
All of those were done by Ashley Grills, also an adult. Incidentally, the Meier family does NOT hold her responsible.... Fascinating, isn't it?
So actually, no good points. Charging the wrong person because of public pressure is never a good thing.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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!
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
"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
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.
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.
Nobody in this thread denied that someone doing this should "share a good bit of responsibility". But it is not murder, which is a pretty precisely defined crime.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
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.
Don't worry, he'll soon learn the ways and be spouting brain-dead soviet Russia joke soon enough.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Because she isn't being charged for what happened, she is being charged for unauthorized access to a computer. They are trying to criminalize not following a site's TOS. 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.
My logic is like this:
1) Someone signed up a fake myspace account
2) Someone sent fake messages pretending to be a boy interested in a girl
3) Someone started to be mean, supposedly because that Someone wanted the girl to forget the boy and end the charade
4) As a final comment, Someone told the girl that the world would be better without her
5) No criminal law on the books was violated as a result of this
6) To molify the "protect the children OMG" crowd, a very wrong interpretation of existing law is being used to make an, at best, civil action criminal
7) To make matter worse, the indicted person is NOT the Someone mentioned above
8) The general populace, you included, has been blinded by rage and is losing sight of the fact that actions which have for years been done to avoid spam or other unnecessary identification online are being criminalized all because a girl whose parents wouldn't get her help and who willfully ignored her mother's order to stay off the internet offed herself because she thought a boy dumped her
Is that clear enough for you? I'm not defending the,as you call them, evil actions. They suck. But using a hacking statute to prosecute because there exists no other law rather than fixing the legislation that does exist is reactionary and scary and most of all wrong. You are the one trying to justify it by bring "corrupting minors" into it, then changing the focus when I point out that no living minors were corrupted as it was adults involved. My point revolves solely around the prosecution of, at most, an accessory while the actual participant is forgiven and not charged.
If Ashley Grills had also been charged, I would be railing SOLELY on the law used. That isn't happening, though. So let's go back to your original question regarding a school shooting (great use of more reactionary crap to use your point).
No, you are not less guilty. What you are neglecting in your analogy is this question: Should you be charged and your son NOT charged? since we all know that answer is no, it is not an apples to apples comparison and you are just using inflammatory, emotional arguments to try to make me look like an asshole.I've probably done a great job of looking like an asshole on my own, just not for the reasons you've cited. And I've managed to do it without invoking school shootings and emotional "think of the children" pleas. Think you can work terrorism into your next response for the trifecta?
This is an ADULT manipulating a CHILD (a child whom the adult knew was depressed and suicidal) to commit SUICIDE. This is not a case of peers trading insults, or homophobes telling people "don't be gay."
She may or may not have intended the suicide itself, but she clearly intended to inflict great psychological harm on an already mentally unstable child.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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...
And yet, we are a country of laws. That a child was harmed may be the motivation for applying this new theory of law, but neither the law nor the theory are bound to those "special" circumstances.
You can't apply laws differently to one person or one case because you don't like what happened. Either compliance with the TOS is a condition of whether your access was authorized, or it's not. "It is, but we would only ever enforce that fact if a child was hurt" doesn't fly.
The authorities are outraged, and rightfully so. Nobody can believe that we can't find a law that applies to what allegedly happened here. (Yes, allegedly.) 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.
I prefer a country of laws, even if I sometimes have to let a scumbag go. If this woman is as evil as she's being portrayed -- and she may well be -- then she'll find her own way to justice in due course.
"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.
Actually, it can be.
Charles Manson didn't kill anyone, only told other people to do it.
She didn't say something cruel, she manipulated someone into killing herself.
That's a lot different then angerly shouting at someone to drop dead.
"It's a far greater concern to me, anyway, that parents dump their kids, unattended, on the internet. "
you don't know that. she could ahve easily be allowed a set amount of time. At 13 you should be getting a little less controlling over your children.
They may have been happy she was communicating with a peer that made her happy. She was depressed and then she starts talking to someone that makes her happy, they where probably thrilled.
I don't think there was much time between the end and her killing herself.
The issue is more complex then you want to believe.
Your amazing anecdote aside, not all kids online are just 'dumped' there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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
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.