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User Charged With Felony For Using Fake Name On MySpace
Recently a user, Lori Drew, was charged with a felony for the heinous crime of pretending to be someone else on the Internet. Using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Lori was charged for signing up for MySpace using a fake name. "The access to MySpace was unauthorized because using a fake name violated the terms of service. The information from a "protected computer" was the profiles of other MySpace users. If this is found to be a valid interpretation of the law, it's really quite frightening. If you violate the Terms of Service of a website, you can be charged with hacking. That's an astounding concept. Does this mean that everyone who uses Bugmenot could be prosecuted? Also, this isn't a minor crime, it's a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment per count. In Drew's case she was charged with three counts for accessing MySpace on three different occasions."
...but the subject fails to mention, for whatever it's worth, that this is the same Lori Drew that's been all over the news for helping her daughter create a fake Myspace to lead a neighborhood 13 year old girl into thinking a boy liked her. Drew and her same-aged daughter (and apparently one other teen) perpetrated this farce and then pulled the rug out, making this teen girl think the boy no longer liked her. The girl subsequently committed suicide.
It seems that because of that, IMO, the feds are out to nail her on whatever they can, not because of a site's terms of use policy. Though this would set a terrifying precedent.
This is about the girl who committed suicide.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24670474/
And I agree. I think they should have taken a different angle in the prosecution.
Who will guard the guards?
This scared me at first that it was just another case of "Sheriff Joe Bob" not understanding what these internets are all about but, its not as bad as it sounds.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is not as overbroad as the poster makes it out to be. As others have mentioned, this is the case where a mother created a fake online profile with the specific intent of harassing a girl (that ended up committing suicide). I haven't seen the court papers but she's most likely charged under the law NOT JUST for merely creating a fake profile, but for "intentionally accessing a computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage that results in" "Physical injury to any person" or "A threat to public health or safety". She can't be convicted just for faking a MySpace account. Tin foil hats off.
And yes, IAAAL.
The article doesn't say - but from what I can tell, it appears this person was using someone's name deliberately to harass or defraud them, rather than just using imnotgiving@mynameout.com or similar. This is basically "cyber-bullying" which most people would be against (although I would be one of the first to argue it's ludicrous to have such punishments for cyber-bullying when real bullying is much worse and continues unpunished). The danger here is that as you say, there's negligible legal difference between using some random name (I'm sure there are plenty of "Richard Head"s who would clean up if they caught wind of this litigous opportunity) and proper cyber-harassment (which should be illegal, but only after regular bullying is addressed).