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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."
first post
FUCK?! Do the people that make laws have absolutely ANY idea how the internet works and is used? Are they even living on the same planet as the rest of us? Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Does NotJackie Chan count as a fake name?
Hugh G. Rection
Won't matter for most of us, only the ones who want to change history.
Just remember to pay off the right people, if you can.
How about taking down those dating (and other) sites which generate fake members?
;).
I'm in a country somewhere in Asia and it's "surprising" to see so many blondes in my city when you go look at those sites
OMG I just hacked slashdot, bow before my amazing hacking skillz
Before y'all begin hootin' and hollerin', note that the person being charged is this Lori Drew who -- instead of talking to other parents and handling a problem as a mature responsible parent should -- helped drive a vulnerable little girl to suicide. As messed up as the American legal system is becoming with regard to computer and internet law, I hope that they stick it to her and give her the maximum punishment.
Keep in mind that this is much a much different situation than, say, that dumb kid who was facing years in prison for changing grades(people usually get off with community service and/or fines in such cases).
Drive a girl to commit suicide, and get prosecuted for loggin in under a fake name...
I don't know whats worse, the ACTUAL crime that isn't criminal, or the prosecution under criminal statutes for something which shouldn't be considered a crime?
Test your net with Netalyzr
Is this the same Lori Drew that drove a teenager to suicide by pretending to be a teen aged boy that intentionally was scorning the teen girl? So there might be a little more to this story...
I'll only visit websites where I can invoke the Anonymous Coward!
Really... pseudonyms are an internet tradition... in fact, with all the marketing hoo-ha and identity theft, only a fool uses their real name on the net
I don't think I have used my real name for anything on the net...
Sounds like just a cash grab to me
Jeez. I can't remember how many times I entered in BillGates@Microsoft.com as an email address on some random site.
Guess that makes me a felon? Or am I only a felon if I get caught?
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
My name is not Anonymous Coward. It's false. Can I be sued now?
This is, of course, the Lori Drew who worked hard online to bully and demoralize a teenage girl to the point where she committed suicide.
The question is, since no laws exist which would allow her successful prosecution for her actual offense, why prosecute her for a violation of a site's TOS, which would establish a dangerous precedent for many users who simply don't want a site to have their private information?
This case belongs in civil court, not criminal. Let the dead girl's parents sue Lori Drew, prove their case, if possible, and collect monetary damages.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
And just how many people have a) the time to read 20 pages of small print and b) the education to understand all the legalese ?
Simply put, NO one but lawyers or lawyer wannabes reads the terms of service because the average man on the street can't understand it
...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.
IANAL, but thank goodness for jury nullification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
We the people need to start taking back our rights and making sure the government is of and by us.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
is best when served chilled, much like revenge. Especially when the selective enforcement is revenge.
It's even better when done by a capricious government, but we don't know any of those, do we?
I for one, wish there was a page limit on the U.S. code and the Federal Register. I see the inability to know all the laws one is responsible for (and their various interpretations) as the number one threat to freedom and justice. Funny thing is: many laws come from a desire to make society better. Kind of a Gandalfian "I would use this ring from a desire to do good, but through me it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine."
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
You make it seem as though they are being deceptive. How is what she did important to if this law is valid or not?
"You can't wiretap phones without a warrent!"
"Well, this person is a terrorist"
The ends never justify the means. The ends is bullshit, the means is what you have to live with.
I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
The police state we so fear is already here. They have passed so many laws and now have so many rules that all of us likely break laws every day by simply going through our day-to-day routine! This means that THEY can bust us whenever they want!
The sad thing is that WE are THEY-and if we took back the power that we've given them, THEY would go away!
For those that don't read other news sites, there's actually more to this than mentioned in the summary (shocking, I know). This woman is accused of bullying a minor to the point where she (the minor) committed suicide, using this 'hacked' account pretending to be friend or peer of the girl. Absolutely disgusting case, if the allegations are true. Since she didn't actually physically murder the girl, it seems the prosecutors had trouble figuring out which crime(s) to charge her with. Of course there's more details, but I'm just summarizing. I couldn't load TFA, but it seems this is the best the DA could come up with- hopefully this won't set bad precedent.
Correction please: Why some of /. love her so much.
Personally: If this law is the only one they can find to get her under then so be it. Personally I'd rather it was something like manslaughter but this is better than nowt.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Thank gawd my real name is "Broken Yer Toys, Jr".
But this is frankly one of those cases where I have no sympathy for the woman. With some luck, she'll have huge court costs, have her name thoroughly trashed in the public eye, and generally have her life ruined, but she'll be found innocent.
I hope the grocery store doesn't crack down on me for calling myself Michael Jackson when I signed up for the "preferred" customer card.
Then again, most spammers just want to make sure I can get a hard-on and have plenty of busty babes and a Canadian pharmacy connection to work with - they're not performing a near-textbook case of manslaughter by depraved indifference.
..so I have to choose between protecting myself from the kinds of predators (identity thieves, spammers, etc) that abound on the internet, and being a felon? Bull-fucking-shit. I can't see where this'll stand up in court. I also can't see how they'd expect to enforce such a thing, since I'd estimate that at least half of the people on MySpace don't use their real name. How about dating sites, in particular the few free dating sites out there? NOBODY uses their real name up-front on a dating site! Do lawmakers expect all these people to expose themselves to the kinds of threats you're faced with on dating sites, too? Stuff and nonsense!
and if you do what's in it for you anyway?
This bitch deserves to fry for what she did... but if this is the only charge being brought against her I hope to God that she walks. This could set a precedent infinitely more hostile to progress and dangerous to liberty than a nutjob who drives a girl to kill herself ever did. There's got to be a law about intentionally fucking with a young child's mind, especially in a case as extreme as this... why do they have to prosecute her on the basis of using a fake name? Note to the assholes who are inevitably going to bring this up: I'm not trying to equate a young girl's life to my freedom to create a bogus myspace account, I'm saying that a dissident or reporter or whoever may find their own life and liberty in peril should this shit go down.
FUCK?! Do the people that make laws have absolutely ANY idea how the internet works and is used?
That's a big fat negative there Red Rider.
Of course most lawmakers, lawyers, judges, politicians, and law enforcement officers have little to no clue how the internet or even most technology works. There are exceptions of course but for the most part technology isn't inherently interesting to them. Likewise, despite what many slashdotters think, most readers of this forum don't know much about the law or law enforcement. Ignorance results in bad judgments which is why it's important to have good policy and educate as much as possible both on the technology and the law.
I'm a bit disturbed and at the same time, a little happy. I'm happy on the one end that justice has the possibility of being served and the user in this case (Lori Drew) will get some for of punishment instead of getting away scott free. I'm also happy that this could apply to other circumstances (Child Predators and the such). However, the fact that they have to go about this ruling in this manner bothers me. I only wish there was a way they could have linked the result to the ruling so some line can be drawn, instead we go from a very vague interpretation to a now strict understanding. Only a matter of time until some innocent person is screwed and we're back to square one.
Slashdot needs to change it's slogan from "News for nerds" to "Editorials for nerds."
This type of legal action is nothing new and has been happening for decades and there's nothing wrong with it. If you commit a heinous crime, they will charge you with every single criminal act they can find no matter how small.
Slashdot would love for you to believe that this is something new that's never been done before that will have incredibly powerful effects in the future when the opposite is true. It's been happening for a very long time.
I should keep count of how many "articles" here aren't actually news but heavily biased editorials designed to feed the paranoid.
I'd rather not chisel away the foundations of internet freedom just to punish a pathetic woman. While what she did was pretty morally reprehensible, this "solution" would have a far greater impact on society than anything she did.
Drive a girl to commit suicide, and get prosecuted for loggin in under a fake name...
I don't know whats worse, the ACTUAL crime that isn't criminal, or the prosecution under criminal statutes for something which shouldn't be considered a crime?
If you think it's heinous, but not illegal, you lobby to make it illegal.
This incident just proves we live in a police state where any politician who doesn't like you can open some obscure law books, scrutinize your everyday life, and pick an everyday activity to prosecute you out of the picture.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
And you don't trust a judge and jury to appreciate the difference?
she was charged with three counts for accessing MySpace on three different occasions."
I think if we locked up more people for accessing MySpace, the world would be a better place.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
...now that he will have to use his real name on these sites...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In Morocco, a 26 years old was kidnapped, tortured and sentenced to three years in prison for creating a Facebook profile with the name of a prince (the king's brother). The case showed that there have been little change in the country (and its institutions) since the end of Hassan II's tyrannical regime.
Res publica non dominetur
I should post this as AC...
Lori Drew is reprehensible. But we HAVE laws for harassment and disorderly conduct and libel. These can all be applied. There are even laws regarding prank phone calls (which might be best used as reference here). We DO NOT need new precedents that reduce the ability of the individual to access information anonymously.
See...we have the first amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech, press, and religion. What we don't have is a guarantee of unfettered access to information. Using fake accounts for access to some websites is de riguer on the internet. Everyone does it for a WIDE variety of reasons (dont want to get caught fucking someone else, dont want to get caught looking up c4 recipies, dont want to get spam).
Damn...imagine the implications for 10minutemail.com
I've been keeping tabs on this case for awhile, and I can not get over peoples pointless quest for vengeance on this issue.
So she made fun of some stupid stupid stupid pampered teenage girl, who goes and kills herself. Where is the crime here? I can say anything I want to any person I want and if they don't like it they can fuck off.
I can only hope in my wildest dreams that people I flame go and kill themselves.
Lori Drew deserves a medal. And no I'm not trolling.
Also legally this is fucked. If she doesn't win America should be dissolved, there is no freedom left.
Do I trust a judge and jury to appreciate the difference? Not in the slightest. Do you? If so, why?
The article is about Lori Drew. She deliberately used a false name for a crime. Now, I would imagine if I signed up on MySpace as "David McDavid-Chicken the Third", that'd be fine, so long as I didn't shorten my name to David McDavid.
So therefore, she violated the rulings of re McUlta 189 F. 250, Christianson v. King County 196 F. 791, United States v. McKay 2 F.2d 257. (Name changes in the United States)
Therefore, I would assume, through my very minuscule understanding of the law in the U.S., that's what law is actually being violated.
However, I'm still frightened by this. Are law makers going to turn this into a "If you violate the ToS on this website, you're going to Federal Prison/Hell" type of situation? As far as names go, what with assumed names and such, they can't pin anything on you for that. The part that bothers me is the fact that MySpace, granted someone willing to take the time to do it, will disable an account for ToS violation if something so simple as a user's location or age is incorrect. (Though mainly only when it is obvious that such has been done in an intentional manner.)
Two wrongs do not make a right?
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
Yes she should. But the charge should be "lethal harassment" or something, not "using a fake ID on a website" or "not following the terms of service".
It's always such bullshit cases that set extremely dangerous precedents.
Did she use a name that identifies her as someone else (ie identity theft, whether or not that someone else had a account on MySpace) or an obviously unreal name?
TFS doesn't say and TFA is slashdotted.
My real name ISN'T Typingsux.
I'm scared, hold me!
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
I completely agree that the defendant is an unsympathetic character, and I'd not mind seeing something bad happen to her; but this case is a lot more than that.
Vastly unsympathetic defendant + Shaky overreaching legal theory = dangerous precedent.
For that reason, this one has to be watched very, very carefully indeed. Sure, the defendant may deserve what is coming to her; but a precedent of "if we don't like you, I'm sure we can come up with an interpretation of some law you've violated" is pretty appallingly dangerous.
It is rather similar to the case, a while back, of the guy who had a business selling modded consoles loaded with pirated games. He was a stereotypical unsympathetic commercial pirate; but he was busted for mod chips not piracy. An excellent way to establish precedent for the next time, when the defendant may not be so "obviously guilty".
Keep that in mind. A dangerous expansion of prosecutorial discretion would be a ghastly price to pay for a few moments of righteous self-satisfaction.
I realize that this was likely a rhetorical question, but IMO, the rulemakers do not live in the same world as us slashdotters. I would bet that many of the lawmakers still have VCRs hooked up, and the clock has been blinking 12:00 for 10 years. The lawmakers are just like every other "old" person. They call thier son/nephew/grandson for technical support when thier computer isn't working. They do not have a myspace profile, instant messanger account, or any account for that matter beyond email.
While they may be "old people", there is still the issue of commonsense. You don't throw someone to the wolves for just using a pseudonym. I encourage my kids to use pseudonyms on the Internet to protect their privacy, as do I, as do almost everyone with a clue.
Now, I have to consider if I am endangering my kids' liberty -- and they use MySpace, among many other sites popular with the under-21 crowd.
If MySpace even thinks of dragging my kids into criminal (or even civil) court just because they used a pseudonym? I will make it my business to do everything in my power to bring MySpace down.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
There's a big difference between using a pseudonym to hide your identity vs. creating a false online identity for malicious intent e.g. to trick others into thinking you are someone else entirely.
Yeah, such prosecutions could themselves be used maliciously (j'accuse, torrent user!). But this is more "getting Al Capone for tax evasion" rather than busting someone for jaywalking.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
If what she did deserves prison time, there should be a law against it. ]
What they're charging her with is not a sane law though. Selective enforcement of laws is a bad thing. If you can't strip emotion out of the legal system and still have it work, then it's broken.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I was under the impression that legal punishment was in place in order to keep people from getting hurt, not a sadistic need to see more people hurt. (Maybe I'm just naive.) Pushing someone does not cure or revive the victim. If she gets away with what should be a crime but isn't - let her, just change the laws to punish what you believe should be the crime, not just anything to satisfying your (understandable) sadism in this one instance. It is not worth setting a precedent which will only cause more people to be harmed.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Is that a rhetorical question?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Charles U. Farley
Well if she gets convicted I'll have to cancel my page. I don't give anybody my real identity on the internet. I can be looked up. In Google they can even see my house. MySpace is not safe and apparently their terms of service are not safe either.
You really want to misuse a law , set a precedent, just to get revenge on somebody ? It ain't even a slippery slope, it is a whole pandora box. It does not matter for me if she was hitler after a sex change herself, misuse of a bad law is misuse, and anybody whatever the degree of their guilt driven to prison by misuse of a law should be released immediately. That you suddenly for the sake of a revenge think this is OK to misuse the law open the door to god-knows-what.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Fuck, do I have to change my real-life name to "edmicman"?
And myspace is so "heinous", as the summation implies, for going after people that impersonate other people, then, would it be wrong for me to impersonate you...on your bank site, to your employer...
This is my sig.
Yes it is, and the /. summary is about the slimiest piece of disgusting moral dishonesty I've seen in a while, since it leaves out this hugely relevant fact, and manages to imply this is part of a Giant Fascist Plot to undermine anonymity on the Internet. Here's a clue: the government doesn't give a fuck about J. Random Anonymous Coward posting inflammatory anti-government screeds on slashdot. But they do care -- because the community cares -- about a sick 40-year-old woman deliberately and sneakily psychologically abusing a 13-year-old girl to the point where the latter hangs herself in despair.
Lori Drew is Grade A evil, the worst sort of scum, and she is being prosecuted for this apparently silly crime specifically because of what she did. They're simply trying to nail her for something, because through flaws in the law at the time they can't nail her for what she actually did. It's much like the fact that the Feds put Al Capone away in the 1920s for tax evasion, not for all the murders he ordered in Chicago, because that was the only case they could prove in court, and justice -- the actual immortal principle, not the stale idiot's imitation that equates to a mere rigid technical adherence to the written law -- demanded that something be done about his crimes. What's going on here is the same thing. They are tying anything they can around her neck.
I'm cool with that. I haven't the least objection to Lori Drew being prosecuted for anything under the Sun, for the tiniest infraction imaginable. I'd like to see cops tail her day and night for the rest of her life, to nail her for jaywalking, going 0.5 MPH over the speed limit, and littering if she so much as spits in the street.
Does this apply to any website's terms of service? If it does that might give individuals a lot of legal power.
You might be able to create a Terms of Service policy that puts spammers in a position where you can sue them and file criminal charges for misusing the data you published. IIRC there was a case where a security expert had set up an email account to recieve emails and scan the originating domain for security problems. These particular spammers originated from a genuine url. The security expert had published the email address and its services on his website. He had billed the spammers for security services. When they did not pay he sued and won. BTW, IANAL.
So, publish your personal data BEFORE you start giving it out. Copyright it. Then sue anyone who misuses it.
I dont think I'm the first to suggest it.
I hope you were sitting down.
The way I understand it from what I have read, this is basically all they can find that they could charge her with. The situation doesn't fit, according to local (to where it happened) authorities, any of their other available laws (child abuse, etc), or rather fits it even worse than using this law.
I have very mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, yeah, we're starting down a very slippery slope with this one. But on the other hand, this is Lori Drew...she needs to be f**king nailed to the wall as hard as possible, and I hope she has a long natural life that is filled with absolute pain, suffering and misery for every second of it.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I'm sorry but they are just doing their job. This is the prosecution. They are supposed to look for always of getting someone convicted. It is up to a judge and jury to curtail this.
Remember this case is not about justice or right or wrong. It is about the prosecution getting a conviction (and possibly future convictions because they build their careers on them.) It is about a defense attorney getting his client off the hook. It is about a judge making sure rules are enforced and if no jury, making a decision based on precedent.
It has nothing to do with whether the law is a good law or not. We the public make that call through our elected representatives.
If this prosecution works or does not work, we have to get our elected officials to tweak the legal code to prevent such interpretations in the future.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Some staff at my old school registered with their employee email for facebook, and did not identify themselves as faculty. Thus students who had explicit privacy settings allowing only students to view their profiles were compromised. Parties were reported to the local police, and individual users who were underage and pictured drinking on campus property were sent through the college judicial system. (And to the trolls who no, I wasn't one of these people)
Is THAT moral? On one hand, it's out on the internet. On the other, the users denied certain people access using an admittedly easily breakable access control. This doesn't defend a DCMA violation, why not this?
In the end, this seems to be a lose lose situation. Either your social networking profile is NEVER private, or this innocent woman goes to jail.
Does anyone have contact information so that we might protest this? TFA is /.ed...
Fear the penguin.
Great now I can hijack the wireless connection on my neighbors gateway and sign them up to MySpace under some random name. Wait a week for his gateway logs to flush, and call the cops on him.
Last time he borrows the lawnmower and does not return it.
Please keep mentioning this. Jury nullification needs to be brought up as often as possible until it becomes common knowledge that the jury judges the law as well as the facts.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Correction please: Why some of /. love her so much.
Correction: why some of /. want to have predictable justice.
If somebody commits a heinous act, charge them for this act, not for any silly circumstances that he happened to overstep. And if, for whatever reason (oversight), the heinous act is not covered, let the perp walk and then change the laws so as to at least get the next one.
Yes, consider this heinous act as manslaughter, harassment, or bullying, but don't bring violating TOS into it.
Now I'm going to sue you for causing me to sit down next to my chair.
You visit several websites per minute? Lay off the meth.
Any lawyers here want to help out? Isn't this an unconstitutional denial of due process? Seems like there is too not enough notice of what the law actually is. Should also have some problems with free speech rights.
Hwo do they come up with the requisite $5000 in damage?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They are charging her under this. Which is unfortunate, since manslaughter or some variant seems more appropriate.
The point being made, however, is that if violating the TOS of a website is a felony, and any schmuck can write whatever TOS they want for their website, than everyone from the *AA who has ever logged into most torrent trackers can be arrested, and prosecuted.* As a logical extension, if the overlords of Slashdot appended a line to the little disclaimer text, requiring those who post anonymously to enter their full name and address, (which they might have) and you had not noticed, and hence had not done so, you would now be a felon.
Now I don't love Lori Drew. In fact, I think she's an evil woman. The point remains, however, that being evil and bitchy is not a crime. If driving a teenage girl to suicide is not already a crime, finding something to prosecute Ms. Drew under is not an acceptable alternative. The unequal application of the law is anathema to the very concept of the rule of law. If our detest for this woman and her actions allows us to retroactively make them illegal, than none of us can ever be certain that our actions are legal. I hope that what Lori Drew did was illegal. If it wasn't, then it should be made so, in a clear and well defined way. But if it wasn't illegal, than she should not be convicted of anything. That's the deal, that's the price of a society ruled by law, rather than whim.
*Yes, I would consider this a good thing. That doesn't change the fact that it's absurd.
> The access to MySpace was unauthorized because
> using a fake name violated the terms of service.
WTF?
Since when is violating the TOS of an online service a criminal offense?
At most, it's a civil litigation case between the online service and the user who violated the TOS.
Disclaimer: I didn't RTFA because it's slashdotted.
Correction please: Why some of /. love her so much.
Personally: If this law is the only one they can find to get her under then so be it. Personally I'd rather it was something like manslaughter but this is better than nowt.
If the system works to protect even the most vile and reprehensible individuals from government tyranny, it should be capable of protecting the rest of us upstanding individuals. The more that the law bends and twists in the wind to the calls of public outrage and indignation to take down one person for whatever heinous yet non-criminal behavior they may have engaged in, the more easily it will be to do the same thing to someone exercising their inalienable rights (unpopular free speech? free speech critical of the government? etc). If her actions were not criminal, however awful, then this doesn't belong in a criminal court, period.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Don't be absurd. You speak as if prosecutors and judges are robots running Perl scripts. This case has zero "wide implications that will affect other cases," because in all cases the prosecutor has extremely wide latitude about what to charge people with, if anything, and what to prosecute, and what kinds of deals to offer, or not offer. And then even if one is convicted, the Court itself has equally wide latitude in what kind of punishment it can impose. The decisions of prosecutors and judges in one jurisdiction have zero legal force, and in such an unusual case, just about zero persuasive force, on cases in other jurisdictions.
It's ludicrous to imagine that just because the prosecutor decides to hammer Lori Drew -- because the community is demanding that something be done to her -- some other prosecutor is going to be forced to robotically equivalently hammer some poor doofus who signs up with AOL with a fake name in order to write nasty spam e-mail to his ex-wife. Unlike programming, the successful operation of the law does not require logical consistency. To the contrary, in each individual case the prosecutor will exercise his judgment, decide who really needs taking down and who doesn't. That's the way the law works. That's why people who commit exactly the same crime, technically speaking, often suffer widely varying punishments.
This is possibly the worst summary I have ever seen on Slashdot (I must be new here!). Leaving out the tiny detail of Lori Drew having DRIVEN A CHILD TO COMMIT SUICIDE seems to be missing the point so completely, that if the point were a hydrogen atom on the sun, this summary would be aiming for the Small Magellanic Cloud.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
This is about trying to get the person on MySpace who drove the girl to suicide for something. It's some prosecutor that's trying to score political points. He doesn't care if he sets a bad precedent and destroys the Internet, he just wants to make a name for himself.
I haven't seen anyone who seems to love that dispicable women, but most of us here hate bad laws and bad interpretations of laws, especially laws that could impact us if misused.
If you can't convict a murderer honestly, let him go free. It doesn't mean you like him or condone his actions, it means you like and respect the rule of law.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
You may use any name you wish unless you intend to commit fraud. From wikipedia:
* One may be employed, do business, and enter into other contracts, and sue and be sued under any name they choose at will (Lindon v. First National Bank 10 F. 894, Coppage v. Kansas 236 U.S. 1, In re McUlta 189 F. 250).
* Such a change carries the exact same legal weight as a court decreed name change as long as it is not done with fraudulent intent (In re McUlta 189 F. 250, Christianson v. King County 196 F. 791, United States v. McKay 2 F.2d 257).
* This at will right is guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment (Jech v. Burch 466 F.Supp. 714).
An unfair, unjust conviction is not better than nothing, it is worse than nothing. It may be better than nothing for her, but there is no person so heinous as to merit selective application of the law, or worse, ex post facto criminalization of a then legal activity. Not one. Not so long as we wish to live in a free society, not so long as we wish to be ruled by law, rather than tried and convicted only in the court of public opinion.
The suicided issue and the fake name nasty behavior of people on the wed is not the isue.A young woman died due to a number of complicated reasons (see New York time magazine for interesting article.) because the girl committed suicide every one wants to blame some one or some thing as some one who has unsuccessfully made an attempt on my life you would be amazed what little any one can do to stop this. as for the impersonation thing shouldn't we prosecute the man that lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for pretending to be president
Just say you were pretexting, and then everything will be alright.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
And here I thought I was just voting for the anti-christ.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
Is there a difference between an anonymous internet identity and impersonating someone else to phish data?
This should be a key point in interpreting.
Does the "Equal Protection" clause of the U.S. Constitution offer any protection against selective enforcement of the law?
That is, if you can show in court that millions of people are logging in to websites with fake names, but you're the only person to be prosecuted for that "crime", then can you get the case thrown out on the grounds that your constitutional rights are being violated?
Laws like this have been in the pipeline for a long time, but they aren't going to go out after everyone using a fake name. The problem is too widespread. What they will go after people for (like in this case) is if the fake name is created with the intent of causing harm, or committing an illegal act.
As I said before, the sentence for these crimes may be small in relation to what Lori Drew did, but it does then open her up to a wrongful death lawsuit, in addition to giving the feds some handy case law.
All these posts denigrating the law and the justice system, based on something as inherently unreliable as a slashdot article summary. First of all, if anyone here thinks that under this law you could be indicted for just creating a pseudonym on an online forum, you really need to learn critical thinking skills. Hell, anonymity is constitutionally protected in many circumstances.
I've read the indictment, and that's not what it says. The relevant federal law requires that the unauthorized access to be done in furtherance of some tortious or criminal act. To extort money, to cause physical injury, to get government secrets, to damage the computer, etc. In this case, the defendant gained unauthorized access to myspace to intentionally inflict emotional harm on this girl. Now whether that qualifies as "physical injury," I don't know; they might have to show that the defendant intended the girl to physically hurt herself or sustain injury as a result of the abuse. But even if it gets thrown out, it is still close enough to justify bringing the charge in the first place. No, it is not a symbol of the horrible legal oppression everyone suffers here. I am not especially pro-prosecutory; in fact, I almost joined the public defender's office after law school, and I am very skeptical of prosecutors in general. But I'm also sick of the ridiculous overreaction everyone here has everytime anyone anywhere is charged with a crime.
Endangering the welfare of a minor, negligence, fraud, hell, even a number of conspiricy charges would apply...
Just slap her with as many charges as possible and let the court sort it out. But she'll be let of by the mere ridiculosity of it all if this is all they're going to charge her with. Maybe the DA is trying to let her off...
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
...is the question: How did anyone bar the user herself know she was using a fake name? How did MySpace, the prosecutors or whoever initiated the whole thing, get the information?
Dunno about you but it scares me quite a bit.
Were they using a pseudonym or trying to impersonate someone else?
Its perfectly legal to have a pseudonym in the real world, so how the hell can it be illegal in the cyber one?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Impersonating someone else is fraud in the US.
As to the guy currently living in the White House; I may not like that he is the current President, but he is the President (GOD HELP US!)
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
Do the people that make laws have absolutely ANY idea how the internet works and is used?
First of all, nobody's making a law here. This is a grand jury (12 ordinary people) getting persuaded to indict Drew based on a weird legal theory that probably won't stand up in court.
So if this indictment isn't going anywhere, why issue it? Because millions of people are pissed off about the suicide of Megan Meier, which occurred after she was humiliated via that bogus MySpace account. Of course, using an online account to humiliate somebody isn't illegal (if it were, we'd all be accessing Slashdot from jail!), so all this outrage had nowhere to go — until a creative Federal prosecutor came up with this ToS theory. Which, as I said, will probably go nowhere. Lawyers come up with strange legal theories. Judges shoot them down. Happens every day. That's why we have judges.
People need to dial back the outrage. Drew was allegedly pissed at Meier over some stupid teenage thing that happened between Meier and Drew's daughter. Then millions of people got pissed at Drew and demand that she be thrown in jail, never mind what the law says. Now you're pissed at some half-assed legal maneuver whose only really purpose is to appease all the people who are pissed at Drew. Too much pissedness, not enough thinking. Chill out, America!
No that's really my real name. Really.
This is basic game theory, folks. As long as most people conceal their behavior it is viable for many people, if not most, to decry things that they do themselves in private. This rewards dishonesty.
The more of you hide behind anonymity, the more denial will take place.
The more denial there is, the fewer decisions will be made rationally.
The less rational decisionmaking is, the worse our laws will be.
The more of you hide behind anonymity, the easier it is for the things you value to stay illegal or otherwise subject to sanction.
Speaking as somebody who is here under his real name, I think that there's an awful lot of bullshit out there traceable precisely back to the anonymity of the internet. An anonymity that was never more than an artifact of the system in the first place. I agree that in certain places there is a valid need for anonymity. If I still had a corporate job maybe I would be more reluctant to do things as openly as I do. But otoh, I think that people have used the internet in particular and turning a blind eye in general as a way to keep being dishonest with themselves and each other about their lives.
I read porn. I like it. I've got a nice little trove of pictures of naked women on my computer. So do most of you, correcting for gender where appropriate. I don't believe in any sort of sky god or attend any sort of church. I eat meat, support full legal abortion, and do quite a few other things that are considered offensive to many folks out there, some of whom won't buy my products or otherwise deal with me if and when they find this stuff out. And I get a little tired of how few of you are willing to stand out here in public as I have chosen to do.
Grow a pair, people. Stand up and start admitting under your own names what you do and why. Until you do, the right wing slimebags will always not only have you by the short hairs, they'll keep punishing the people like me who stand up and try to help your sorry lazy selves.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the statute is found unconstitutional as void for vagueness, as it criminalizes a very vague actus reus, exceeding authorized access.
In the U.S., people are supposed to be able to know what the law is. (Accepting, for the moment, that they may need an attorney's help.) Criminalizing a terms of use violation hands off the legislation of criminal law to private parties, who may do a really crappy job of being clear of what is legal or not.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on TV. (R)
And that is why we have so many bad laws. You're essentially saying "I want blood and I don't care what the wider effect on society is."
Sometimes the first person to commit a particular type of crime will simply need to be left unpunished. The proper thing to do is to pass a new law that specifically targets the bad behavior without catching normal behavior in a dragnet.
Allowing prosecutors to stretch an existing law so that it can target largely harmless behavior is not a good idea.
If you like that sort of behavior then why not just pass a law that says "prosecutors are allowed to punish anyone with 5 years imprisonment for any reason" and then allow them to selectively punish people whenever they do something nasty that isn't illegal. What could possibly go wrong?
Cow Cube
The Feds are going to have a tough battle -- they'll have to _prove_ that Lori violated the MySpace ToS in the absence of a MySpace complaint. MySpace can be brutally cross-examined and serious doubt generated about exactly what the ToS could possibly mean when they are utterly unenforced even by simple, available means ($1 cr.card charge) albeit for some reduction in customer base.
Watch lyin'Lori walk in the face of yet another botched prosecution. So many of these I wonhder if they're not deliberate, to erode liberty.
Simply put, NO one but lawyers or lawyer wannabes reads the terms of service because the average man on the street can't understand it
I'm a lawyer, and I don't usually read the TOS. But I also don't sign up to web sites with fake names in order to emotionally abuse 13 year old girls. The best way to avoid committing a crime is to use a modicum of ethics and/or common sense.
I guess it's time to update my /. profile.
Now what's my real name again?
Take off every 'sig' for great justice.
Alternatively, you can say that most people will never be pursued for this kind of thing, but if they fraudulently open an account and then use that account to hound a 13-year-old girl to suicide, it's not surprising that the full weight of the law will be brought to bear on them. Drew can't be prosecuted for harassment or child abuse, of both of which she is apparently utterly guilty.
It's not great, but I have to say that I'm glad she's being prosecuted for something. It's like Al Capone being busted for tax offences - it may not be the ideal, but it's better than letting her go entirely unpunished.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Are you telling me that if she verbally abused that girl in person to the point where she killed herself that it would be A-OK by the law simply because she wasn't violating a TOS?
Parent is exactly right on the money. I'd just like to add a corollary case: if, instead of hanging herself, the kid had sought help by signing up for a throwaway account on myspace and joining a support group (ie the kind of thing you wouldn't want publicly associated with your real account), would that make the victim into the fellon?
Christ, I want to see what she SAID that could have possibly made her commit suicide.
I hesitate to bring this up here, but while what Lori Drew did was reprehensible, where were the girl's parents?
Drew (46) signed up to MySpace using the fake name "Josh Evans" (though not a real person, so this could technically be considered a pseudonym) to befriend, then harass and "inflict emotional distress (on)" Megan Meier (13). Rude, yes. Unforgivable, yes. Crazy, probably. Illegal, ???
Where were Megan's parents through all this? Why weren't they interacting with her and monitoring her on-line activities. This didn't happen over night. While I grieve for the parents, they were negligent for not supervising Megan and her on-line relationship for "Josh" properly -- especially if there was any indication that Megan was unstable and/or having personal or school problems.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I agree and as someone who does support for law firms I would add that most lawyers don't read them either (20 pages of fine print = 0.25 non-billable time)
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
It's nice to see everyone leap up on the bandwagon and accept the notion that this creepy woman drove an innocent kid to suicide. I'm I the only one who thinks the story entirely too pat?
Nasty postings on myspace.com are hardly going to make me do myself in. If this girl killed herself over something so utterly trivial, I should think that a little investigation would uncover someone with a pre-existing case of severe depression.
I'm not saying the woman wasn't an awful, scheming witch; I'm sure she was and is. But charging her with manslaughter as some have suggested in other posts is absurd. Most of the charges appear to be largely trumped-up political offenses; she's unpopular and must therefore be punished.
Nobody wants to discuss the issue, but the girl clearly had serious mental health problems.
Think about it.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
No! I personally detest that woman for what she did. But if we allow her to be convicted based on "using a fake ID on the net", then we are creating a precedent that will in the long run screw us all over big time. The consequences for millions of people could potentially be devastating and I do not think it is worth it.
But hey, the US government is working hard to apply laws in retrospect (Telco immunity anyone?), so why not create a law against certain types of cyber bullying that can be applied to this case?
Now if only *you* would post under a real name. /.ing at work? And, if so, that's a perfect example of anonymity supporting continuing bad policy. It was a running joke because it was so true that the most widely installed software on old minis was Rogue, a game. Those of us in the operations field have always known that users always use their computers to do more than read work-related email or equivalent. And human behavior scientists have long since proven that people work better if they're managed on the basis of net contribution, not of micromanaged data about what keystrokes they made or what windows they had open at any given second. But as long as just about everybody takes part in the conspiracy of denial about this, managers can get away with managing by keystroke and claim that they're being rational. I point you to this book for plenty of data on how and why.
Interesting example, isn't it? Why would somebody decide to post such a thing anonymously? It makes the poster look informed, helpful, attentive, and polite. Is the poster afraid of being caught
But they only get away with this because people don't fight hard enough to spread the word that their approaches don't even maximize profits, let alone inspire creative work.
Y'all love sitting around posting here about the evils of The Man when things like keystroke tracking software get more widely implemented. Whatever. You want to really fight it? Post under your own fucking names for a change and admit at work that you're doing it. That you Slashdot from your job. AND that it doesn't impede your productivity. Otherwise you're just wanking.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
As sick as what she did, I don't see how faking an identity in order to harass someone until the point that they kill themselves would not be covered under like, involuntary manslaughter at the very least.
They're just doing what any good prosecutor does -- throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks.
That said, I think this is a real loser for the prosecution. There's no way the Supreme Court is going to let people be criminally liable for failing to obey a contract of adhesion. That's just madness. I doubt that this'll survive even at the trial level if her defense attorney hasn't forget everything about unconscionability since graduating law school years ago.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Oh God, I only wish I could remember one guy's signature that essentially stated that if his email was carried on anything Microsoft, that Microsoft would owe him dearly. I wonder if this would be considered an enforceable term-of-service?
In a sense, you are right. If I break the terms of service for your website, you should be perfectly entitled to boot me off that website and rightly deny me that service. Having me charged with a felony for not standing on my head and saying the alphabet backwards while using your website just because you have some boilerplate clickthrough TOS saying I can't access your site unless I'm standing on my head and saying the alphabet backwards is plain ridiculous.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
The charge is using a fake name to sign up for myspace for the purpose of committing another crime. (in this case i'd call it homicide).
its very common for misdemeanors to become felonies when they are used as steps in committing further crimes.
It seems that many people clearly don't understand the legal issues presented here.
Lori Drew, regardless of what she did or did not do with respect to the girl, did nothing illegal. Those of you saying she should be thrown in jail or prosecuted for murder just do not understand the facts of things - maybe OJ should be in jail, but guess what? He's not!
At any rate, this is simply an attempt to hijack another statute (yes, another, this happens all the time) to find SOMETHING to charge her with because some people morally disapproved. (Not that I don't, but let's be honest here - it's not civil libertarians who are crying out for Ms. Drew's head!) This hijacking, as I said, happens all the time - right down to a cop deciding he saw you with a beer can on the street if you're bothering some local business, even if no such thing occurred. Usually, there's a reason or purpose, and no real backfiring for the community.
The major problem with this prosecution is the LACK of that balance - there's a massive backfiring going on here. This is the incredibly troubling precedent this case has the potential to set, which most people seem to understand to some degree.
That said, if Ms. Drew has an even halfway competent attorney, this charge will not stick. Prosecutors in general are renowned for not understanding the events they charge based on, especially when it comes to technology and security issues. The only angle they potentially have on this is "with intent to do harm" or something like that.
The problem with that specific requirement, which apologists will say eliminates most people from being charged, is this: if Joe Prosecutor logs into his Gmail - jprosecutor@gmail.com - and fires off a nasty email to a subordinate, he has arguably used an alias to cause harm to another, and the intent level would be assumed and automatic, by the logic used in the Drew case.
Clearly, jprosecutor is an alias, right? If you do anything online with anything other than My.Full.Name and then do anything that anyone might not like, or that might insult or hurt anyone else's feelings, guess what? Legally speaking, you're liable! Better pray whoever you offend, intentionally or otherwise, doesn't know enough to call the cops on you.
That said, I have some faith in the judge here to recognize this railroading for what it is, and throw it out.
what if i publish all my various names in some [obscure] public location? like a one time newspaper spot or at the end of an innertube. INSANITY. this won't stand. too bad it's happening to this person. now i better go check (RTFA) that this user has not used this for some other, properly charged, purpose. i.e., where's the plaintiff's damage?
You do, however, sign up to free email accounts, sometimes perhaps even not using your real name, right?
You've certainly signed up to Slashdot using a fake name, as would anyone with any degree of sanity!
But what if you offend someone on here, or in an email? What if you offend them or hurt their feelings so grievously that they kill themselves? You may not have meant to, sure, but in hindsight, it will be awfully easy for anyone to point the finger at you and say it's all your fault. Then you start finding yourself on the wrong end of near-malicious prosecutions...
Not that I approve of Drew's actions, but I think there are lines that need to be drawn.
That's your username, you have to change your name to what you put for your Real Name (Help & Preferences --> User Info -> General). So I'll have to change my name to a null field. Then again, having no name could be kinda cool, I bet I'll be all the rage with the goth and hippie chicks :D
"What's your name?"
"I...have no name" |: |
OMG he's so mysterious, I must look past his acne, frugality and complete disregard for the laws of fashion and have his babies!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This potentially sets a broader precedent than just using a fake name. What it does is imbues a website's Terms of Service with the power of law. This is a very bad idea on a number of levels.
Let's start with a far-out example, simply because I feel like it. If a website for sushi lovers demands that all its users enjoy sushi, and some troll joins up and says they hate sushi, that person under this reasoning would be a criminal who would potentially face 5 years in prison.
Terms of Service do NOT have the rule of law. There are very few bodies with the power to make laws in this country, and the lawyers and idiots that craft EULA's and Terms of Service are NOT among them. This does not mean you can always violate them at will - there are laws regarding contracts that apply, and if you agree to them you may be liable there - but these are not felonies.
To state that breaking a Terms of Service, which is NOT even reviewed by congress or any other legislative body, can subject a person to 5 years in prison is simply wrong. Even if it is to cause emotional harm. Say I discover a remarkably stupid post on a blog, register to post comments, and flame the author for its blatant stupidity. I could go to jail for 5 years.
What this woman did was wrong, there is no debating that, but the fact is that this a precedent-setting charge and, if it goes forward, stands to impact all of us. Find a real charge, something that is actually illegal, and charge her with that. If you can't find a law, let her go and pass one to make sure you catch the next person. Don't allow non-legislators to legislate law. Otherwise the ToS of my website is going to say that you all have to become my personal slaves and serve my every whim in order to access my website.
It is not a bad law. It is a unique and inventive use of a law intended to punish people who crack into systems.
It doesn't matter if it can or is intended to be used against genuine criminals. If it is so broadly written that it can be used to turn a minor breach of contract into a federal felony it is a bad law, period.
Breaking a contract is a matter of civil law not criminal, and is punishable only by restitution of actual and punitive damages, not prison time. The actual damages caused to MySpace by her actions are at most harm to their reputation, but even that they would have a hard time showing. The proper punishment for false registration in this case is no more than terminating the account.
And, they have a point as the terms of service for MySpace state that, in order to use the service, one must provide correct information.
People can put just about anything into their Terms of Service. Can you honestly say that you have even read every TOS for every site you have membership on? Do you honestly believe that it is reasonable to charge someone with a felony for not following any random thing that is put into the TOS? Do you honestly think that providing a false name is the same level of crime as hacking a system? Because that is exactly what the prosecution is arguing in this case, and from reading the law, that seems to be what it says.
But murder isn't what she's being charged with. This isn't about what she did, this is about whether this law is a reasonable law. If it isn't a reasonable law for everybody than it doesn't matter whether we like her or not, she should still be held to the same standard.
my page claims my name is Nyarlathotep, that i am 8ft 11in, and that my occupation is 'Harbinger of the Endtimes'
This is not supposed to be hacking.
At worst, this could be fraud.
Welcome to the year 2008. Enjoy the ride.
CNN's whore of a reporter Nancy Grace berated a woman to the point she committed suicide as well, and she faced no prosecution for it. Why should this woman be treated any differently just because she used a pseudonym? This would set a horrible precident if allowed to go through, and likely make criminals of almost everyone who has used the Internet.
today is spelling optional day.
Ever hear about them pre-paid cards?
Also... As we are talking communication here... NOBODY asks for your address when you mail something. You know... like a letter.. on paper...
MySpace is not a bank that is giving you money based on your collateral or an employer that hires you based on your credentials.
MySpace is giving nothing of value and is giving it FOR FREE.
MySpace requires nor deserves my private information any more than a guy giving away leaflets in the street.
Both the service and the requirements for service they are offering have exactly 0.00$ value.
So why should I give my personal information (that DOES have value) in exchange for something that is free?
Do you want MySpace/Newegg/TigerDirect to call references, run a credit report, or take additional measures to verify your identity
Sure. Let them do that. When they get the legal right for that. In the entire world. Including running reference on minors.
Lets see how it will go.
Let me put it this way.
Say MySpace is a free concert.
Only, they are not the people at the concert, or the bands, or tech crew, or even the guy selling peanuts (grass more likely but never mind that)...
They are the guy that provides the land the concert is held on.
They start "taking names" and criminalizing people at the concert - people start leaving and the music eventually stops.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Although I think what Lori did was irresponsible and appalling. Charging her with a 'hacking' crime for what she did would be like charging a parent with neglect because they took no interest in their 13 year old's life to know that they where on the verge of suicide or abuse because they knew she was and didn't find her the help that she needed. On one is innocent in this case except for the poor girl who thought her only choice was to take her own life.
Quite!
If she had used her real name and even her real age and just said "Hi-hi.. *gigle* I'm not really 40.. I'm a teenager... like you." to the girl that killed herself - all would be fine. No case.
NONSENSE!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So, it's one thing to make fun of an irrational person and a different thing to make fun of an irrational person? I certainly would classify as "irrational" a person who commits suicide based on something someone wrote in a website.
I remember the case of a guy I knew many years ago. He was a drunk who could never hold a job, but people bought him drinks because he told funny stories in the bar. One night he was walking home and took a shortcut across a garden when it was raining. He fell face down in a pool of rainwater and drowned. Would you say the people who bought him drinks were guilty of manslaughter?
Both cases are more or less the same, people who are basically unfit for life causing their own death. Normal people would need much more than reading an abusive webpage or walking through a garden in the rain to die. The teenage girl could have suicided because her favorite pop star got married, the drunk could have electrocuted himself in the bathtub.
It may seem callous, but people with such a distorted personality are living on borrowed time, no one can predict which act will cause their death. Of course, it's wrong to make fun of a neurotic teen or giving drinks to an alcoholic, but I don't think these should be classified as homicidal acts, because death couldn't be predicted, it wasn't even the most likely probability, it just happened.
I can't believe you were modded interesting. There's a huge difference between deliberate, targeted harassment and someone's paranoia.
The problem with the Al Capone argument is that it means you have to make everything illegal so that when people step out of line you always have something to charge them with, no matter how unrelated (eg. arresting murderers for tax evasion).
I'm not sure it's a path we should tread.
No sig today...
Talking people into despair that causes bunch of people to kill themselves and then getting arrested for misspelling your name on the tax forms.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Like... I don't know... French Mailman?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Then again, I think what she did should be criminal - psychological harassment - but, I don't write the laws...
Cause I find your view on the subject as psychological harassment. It upsets me greatly.
Should I get to sue you based on that? Although... it is not like I am FORCED to read your comment.
Quite like that girl that got upset by other people's comments on an internet site.
Maybe I am suicidal too? Maybe I am cutting myself because of your comments right now.
You can't just throw blanket judgments like that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...using nom de plumes! Or pseudonyms, if you will. Americans enjoy a rich history of allegedly seditious writings created under aliases. Have these people never heard of the Federalist Papers? Do they not know from what the United States of America and its Constitution were born?
This will set a scary precedent, indeed.
That noise you're hearing? It's Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave.
-riffraff
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
I can't believe the over reaction here. Does anyone actually know what a legal alias is? she used an alias to create an account for purposes other than the legal ones provided in the TOS. This is NOT a legal alias. If you were to do that I would expect you to be prosecuted also. The mass of ignorance on Slashdot must be getting close to critical. God help me I don't know everything but at least I try to find out what the situation is before I post. I'm not always successful.
Why bother
Uh, we don't. We just hate bad precedent and brain-dead application of laws in cases where they don't belong even more.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
The process for a legal name change starts with identifying oneself under a name other than what you currently hold. It is legal to use an alternate name from the one on your birth certificate, it just isn't your legal given name - It is an alias or a nickname.
At least that is how it appears when I investigate legally changing my name here in Canada. I doubt it would be dissimilar in the USA.
With that in mind, it could be very difficult to prosecute someone for entering the name they wish to be known as. Acting as someone else, existant, for the purposes of misleading... a different story pursuable under fraud.
Meh
Really?
I think the bitch should be lynched and hung from a lamp post, or at the very tarred and feathered. But that's an emotional response and has nothing at all to do with the legal system of a civilized society.
And I would still rather there be no charges be levied against her at all that have her be charged with a bullshit charge like this - which sets very, very dangerous legal precedent. The job of the courts is to try people on actual guilt of a crime, and not to punish her for a reprehensible act which no law actually covers - but use a bullshit proxy law through which to do it.
If there is no applicable law, then lawmakers are the ones to fault. We are a civil society and do not try people for things like this, as a rule. If it means someone guilty of harming another gets off in a fringe case, so be it: the purpose of trying people for crimes and putting them in prison is meant primarily as a deterrent to future crimes of the same type, not to punish the criminal.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I say this self-defence (against identity theft and harassment) and is no offence.
Not using an alias when signing up to social network sites that should be the felony and the only defence should be an insanity plea.
namgge <--- Not my real name, so arrest me.
Hey, my name is Franking Proctoromiship you insensitive clod!
Well, you did kind of ask for it. :-)
BTW, where/how did you come up with Franking Proctoromiship anyway? Or has something just whoooshed over my head unnoticed?
P.S. I fully agree with your argument here and in above posts.
I think that if this sticks, it will open a Pandora's Box for our legal system. Missouri could not find anything else to charge her with.
How will this impact sites that provide anonymity services online I wonder? (ie: BugMeNot, etc.)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Sorry, but I think that is total bullshit.
People are having an overly emotional reaction to this case because it involves a 13 year old child who killed herself; but as horrible and disgusting as what Lori Drew did was, it does not make her responsible for Megan Meier's suicide. Megan Meier is the only responsible for that, and if it wouldn't have been this situation it could have been any other that occurs to teenagers every day; she suffered from acute depression. She didn't "hound her to suicide." People are responsible for their own actions.
We cannot allow laws to be created based on these sort of emotionally charged "one of a kind" situations. Violating Myspace's TOS is not a fucking felony, and it is NOT okay for DAs to decide to come up with some dubious legal strategy just to make someone pay.
That is wrong...In America it isn't supposed to work that way. you don't decide that someone needs to be punished more than what the law allows for based on what they did and decide that you are going to create some bullshit trumped up crap to do it.
IMO this particular charge should be thrown out, and if the court has any legal sense and a competent judge it will be.
I think we should prosecute anyone that behaves as though they know someone else is who they say they are on the Intar-webz without some kind of solid corroborating evidence. If that makes sense...
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Who the hell modded this as troll? The parent most certainly made a baseless accusation that the prosecution was lazy. Furthermore, the parent most certainly misunderstood the charges. This is not setting a dangerous precedent (it's not setting anything at the moment).
/. less and less these days. The quality in the responses has just gone way down hill.
I expect some asshats to respond without reading, but mod's doing it? Seriously, it's why I read
Not taking into consideration the circumstances? Which legal system works like that?
Tell me, how do you get more years in prison? By killing somebody across the dinning table with your steak knife, or by killing someone after going to the hardware store and buying a machete for that purpose?
The subject's intent and the circumstances are both important factors in a trial. And that is how it should be.
Not-so-minor-correction: killing somebody across the table with your steak knife in a fit of rage. You could have still planned that *perfect* (not really...) murder for years before that dinner, after all.
if this case is successfully convicted!
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
as horrible and disgusting as what Lori Drew did was, it does not make her responsible for Megan Meier's suicide.
Yes it does. Pretending to be someone else in order to exploit known suicidal tendencies and driving someone to suicide does make you responsible. That's why it's despicable: you're exploiting someone's state of mind to do them harm.
Violating Myspace's TOS is not a fucking felony, and it is NOT okay for DAs to decide to come up with some dubious legal strategy just to make someone pay.
I actually agree on this. Hopefully, Lori will show up dead one day and nobody will care, but in the meantime, it's only illegal to impersonate someone specific. Pseudonyms are protected.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
From what I've heard from site owners and forum moderators who've dealt with them, even lawyers (or at least those spouting legalese) don't read the Terms of Service.
"When an adult woman impersonates a 13 year old girl (who is a living person, known to the target), that is fraud."
If that was what happened, you may be right.
What actually happened is Drew made up a fictional person named Josh Evans, a 16 year old BOY.
*stupid git*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
s/\?\?\?/online as "Tom Cruise" and tried selling "Katie's used panties" for $100 each/
--- Bigger bits, softer blocks, tighter ASCII.
Here's why there trying to bend the legal system for this. Had there been a state line between the two parties (however large or small they were) this would have been illegal under the Communications Act of 1934, specifically Section 223, which covers cyberstalking. Especially since the victim was a minor. You can read it yourself here
http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf
The illegality of this isn't fuzzy under this law either, these action violate 4 out of the 5 subsections so I'm not nit-picking.
However since both parties were in the same state it falls under state law. Missouri's legislative branch being ignorant about the advances in communication left a hole in their criminal law and don't want to just let those responsible go because that would look very bad at the next election.
So obviously rather than let the "child abuser/harasser/evil adjective of your choosing, go they throw everything at the problem and see what sticks. To cover their own ass, that's all.
I'm more concerned however with the bad precedents this could set in the legal system. In my opinion, it is more important to safeguard our liberty than it is to punish someone for their wrongdoing.
So then the people at "Catch A Pedophile" are committing a felony too. Damn, now how will we be entertained.
Careful with that double-edged blade.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Since everyone else is doing it, I'll get on the bandwagon.
Al Capone, Tax evasion!
You don't read so good, do you? Looks to me like you just scanned my post for keywords and then just went on to rant about whatever you happened to feel like ranting about.
How does demanding all of that information follow from what I said? My points are: 1.) that anonymity is used to avoid accountability and 2.) that a society in which anonymity is frequent is one in which people will lie about important parts of their lives in ways that make it harder for all of us and that strengthen McCarthyite tactics. Was the bolding too subtle for you last time? Do I need to make the type flash and surround it with arrows? How do my disclosing my height and weight or any of those other things relate to either of those points?
I never denied that there is a place for anonymity. Quite the contrary. But from what I can see, it is used as a crutch by many who shouldn't at times that they shouldn't. If I were female I would be more reluctant to be as public as I am. If I had a lot of money or were better known I would be more careful.
I already have to do damage control occasionally when false or misleading things about me turn up online. Damage control, btw, that is made considerably easier by my habit of disclosing the truth of what I do whenever possible.
Maybe it's worth noting that this is a habit I got into when dealing with people like the NSA while still in my teens and have continued over a career that has involved quite enough spook activity of many sorts, from cryptography to sharing a house with ELF activists. When I talk about privacy issues I do so from a position of broad personal experience with all sorts of intrusive behaviors. And, btw, as a former sysadmin who has been in charge of things like accounting records and email servers many times.
Oh, and since you bring it up, pretty much all of those things ARE publicly disclosed about me. Google my name and you'll find just about all of them. I'm not an idiot so my SSN isn't public, but that's about all that isn't. Nice try but wrong again.
You're barking plenty loud but you're doing it at the wrong tree. Better luck next time.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Twenty years ago, anybody gay would have been in the position you're in now. It is only because people like the Mattachine Society went public over FORTY years ago anyway and many since that this changed. Even then it took a hell of a long time and many fights. But fights that only could be won because more and more people would disclose. Ten years ago BDSM people were in your position. Now most tame forms of BDSM are about as risky to disclose in most jobs as a taste for rum raisin ice cream. Again, Madonna and others made this possible by disclosing. Fiction is nice but it's only when the average person understands that other "average" people do a thing that it truly becomes relatively free of risk to disclose.
/.ers, as it happens.
You are making a choice. Frankly, given what I see these days at the average comics convention, one that's not so very risky anymore in plenty of circles. You are choosing to stay in some field where this is an issue. If you were in most parts of design or some kinds of programming or any number of other fields, being a furry would be no more important than your taste in movies. Possibly less from what I've seen.
Yes, Risk is not equal to zero. But Cost is not equal to zero either. You gamble with your family's future all the time. Do you drive on public roads? Very real chance of death when you do that one. Do you buy things online? Everybody here knows the issues in that one. And so on.
Recent surveys have increasingly focused on how Americans judge risk and the results have come back saying that not only the average American, but most corporate decisionmakers are somewhere between not very good and flat out incompetent at cataloging what the relevant risk factors are, judging which are more and less risky, and efficiently allocating their "basket of goods" to best address those risks and opportunities. It's a particular kind of innumeracy intersecting with a particular absence of self-knowledge that I have found quite common among
Personally, I sacrificed one of the best gigs I ever had by disclosing something sexually suspect in their eyes (would you believe having polish on my toenails?) and while losing that gig pisses me off, put me back there and I would do it all over again. Probably louder. And while I haven't disclosed each and every thing I've ever done, I've been loud and proud in many ways for a long, long time now. At, I say again, considerable cost.
Why? Because the longer everybody waits for "somebody else" to go public with a thing that they do and/or believe, the worse for everybody. The costs are very real, including, I suspect, costs to you.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
a lot (if not most) of the judges in this country are ancient old farts . . .
Really? I've only met about fifteen or twenty judges so maybe I'm missing something. But in my experience and from what I hear from various lawyers, most judges know quite a lot about computers and really aren't all that old. Do you have numbers to back this up?
I'm finding this whole trend on this thread and in general that "judges and lawyers and legislators know nothing about computers" increasingly annoying. What is your basis for this? Do you people know anything about how the courts work? Do you know what WESTLAW is? Or EDGAR? Or LEXIS-NEXIS? Or SOX? Or how key PDFs are to many kinds of jurisprudence? How modern filings are done? Document disclosure? Due diligence? Let alone how much computers have permeated law schools for quite a while now?
Are there a few idiots who give good quotes? Duh. We all know about the "collection of pipes". But I think that y'all are way too ready to dismiss the people in all aspects of the law as clueless and not worth the effort to understand.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
I know this is standard practice, but this act is heinous in itself, in my opinion.
The problem is the two related doctrines of res judicata and double jeopardy. If you don't raise all possible complaints based on the same set of actions in a single suit, then you forever lose the chance to try them later. This is also often why people are allowed to plead mutually contradicting theories of events in a trial, because if they go with a single theory and lose on it, then they're precluded from bringing up the alternate theories.
The alternative to this practice is, as you might see, to drag someone repeatedly into court until one of the theories work. Naturally, this is wasteful to all parties involved, so our court system has evolved with the idea that a prosecutor or plaintiff's attorney needs to try every possible theory that might work at once.
In some situations, failure to do so may end up with you involved in a legal malpractice suit.
I don't necessarily like that they're trying this theory (because it has terrible ramifications in multiple directions if they make it), but I respect them for at least being creative in the possibilities.
We want you to be in trouble, but we can't find a law to use on you
Well, that's actually an insightful way of putting it. Anyone with any sense should know that what this woman did was absolutely horrible and unforgivable. The problem might be that the legal system may not be capable of bringing proper justice to bear against her deeds. This is a really unconventional crime in many ways, and the laws on the books may not be prepared for it. Fixing the laws after the fact doesn't solve the problem of a lack of proper justice in her case.
Again, while I don't like this particular avenue of attack, I damned well understand any prosecutor who tries to nail this witch to the post with any and every statute they have in their arsenal. That's doing your job as a prosecutor, and I *can* respect that.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
How do they know how often she logged on? Did the service provide this info? I assume a warrant was obtained... LOL.
Lori Drew is 48 ys old, not some hormonal teenager. Still, the application of the law being used is a very poor precedent.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Thanks! very good info.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
> Simply put, NO one but lawyers or lawyer wannabes reads the
> terms of service because the average man on the street can't
> understand it
Throwing one's hands in the air and saying ``only lawyers can read
this'' is, in my opinion, an excuse for laziness. Sorry if that
offends. It's almost like the perverse pride that some people have
when they say ``oh I know nothing about computers''.
I and everyone I know reads the TOS and decline to use the site
if they are unacceptable. I have boycotted many sites for this
reason. Yes, many TOS declarations require concentration and time
to read, but there is no secret impenetrable Masonic language.
Would the ``average man on the street'' accept a loan or mortgage
without reading the T&Cs because ``they are too hard''? Would he
decline to read a bus timetable because ``it is too hard''?
As I understand it I believe it was more than just using a fake name, she used the name of another teenager and deliberately set out as being that person... which goes beyond using another name as a pseudonym and into the territory of fraud/identity theft/deception etc...
Freedom does not/should not confer on someone the ability to cause harm to others by their actions, nor should it provide the freedom to ignore taking responsibility for your own actions.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
'Kay - I didn't realise the thing about pseudonyms. I was under the impression that she had actually done something criminal, but obviously I was wrong. That being the case, I withdraw my previous comments.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Yeah, point taken.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
I guess you're right. I think perhaps I over-reacted to this because of how heinous I find Drew's behaviour. Goes to show, even if you count yourself as relatively sensible, you can still be swayed by tabloid-style rhetoric and emoting! My bad.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
You're right - I overreacted. I think you're wrong, though, to say that a suicide is always just the responsibility of the person. There are many, many ways of manipulating someone emotionally to that extent - though in this case it seems that Lori Drew didn't know of Megan Meier's psychological problems and probably had no idea that this was a possible outcome of her actions. Anyway, thanks for making me rethink my position.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Man I cant believe you are writing this. For once I think law enforcement did the right thing. Yes its a weird way to apply the law, but for once loophole were used by the bad guys. This women did something absolutely terrible to this poor girl, she really deserve to be punished and punished severely. That women was old enough to be childish yet she conducted herself that way. By pretending to be a young boy and purposely breaking the heart of a young and easy-impressed, shy girl. That lead to her suicide. I hail for this judgment and I pray for this to happen more often. We need to stop (a bit not too much) relying on the written stuff as if it was unintelligible.. we need to go deep and punish those who deserve it be cause they did... not because they found a way that would prevent then from being punished because of the way it is written.. sorry if I dont make much sence, those are hard topic to write when english is not your primary language...
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. - Ayn Rand
Felony
N.. Law., pl. -nies.
1) One of several grave crimes, such as murder, rape, or burglary, punishable by a more stringent sentence than that given for a misdemeanor.
2) Any of several crimes in early English law that were punishable by forfeiture of land or goods and by possible loss of life or a bodily part.
This doesn't seem to pass muster as a grave crime or one deserving of loss of land or goods. Plus, she's lost her right to vote and own firearms, FOREVER. Sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me.
The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.
I have a MySpace page for a psuedonym I use regularly. Come & get me motherfuckers.
There is a war going on for your mind.
When it says "the two" at the beginning, it means Megan (13 year old) and her mother.
"the two got into an argument over the vulgar language Megan used in response to the messages and the fact that she did not log off when her mother told her to.[4] After the argument, Meier ran upstairs to her room. She was found twenty minutes later, hanging by the neck in a closet. Despite attempts to revive her,[14] she was pronounced dead the following day.[4] According to Ronald "Ron" Meier (Meier's father) and a neighbor who had discussed the hoax with Lori Drew, the last message sent by Evans read: "The world would be a better place without you." Investigators did not find a record of this message."
So, the woman actually driving her to suicide is highly suspect for a couple of reasons. The first is that so many people claim that the woman TOLD her to kill herself (which there is suspiciously no record of, yet ever other message was tracked. Secondly, it was after an argument WITH HER MOM that the girl ran off and killed herself. This sounds a LOT like the parents wanted a scapegoat and said "well, this person was mean to her so we'll tell everyone that Lori Drew's mean comments made her kill herself".
I'm willing to bet most people who are all pissed off against Lori Drew never heard that information.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
If Myspace decides to give people jailtime for using fake accounts. Stop using Myspace and consider Myspace to be a site for stupid people.
Myspace figures that people should be stupid enough to let complete strangers stalk them over the internet, by giving out their real name, their picture, their political views, all to boost their datamining operation, while offering nothing to the user except of course a lawsuit if the user lies to them?
The solution is to simply stop using Myspace, and tell all your friends to stop using Myspace, unless they drop the charges. It's simple really.
Any any other company that tries something like this should be boycotted as well. This way onlyidiots will use their service and they can exploit privacy all they want.
Charge the woman for the crime she committed. Please don't charge her for a crime that I committed twice yesterday while downloading a copy of a text editor. This is the first step down the slippery slope towards prosecuting all those with the wrong political opinions.
Al Capone was prosecuted for a form of tax evasion that is a secondary effect of living a life of crime, and a crime that 95% of law abiding people don't commit. This woman is not being prosecuted for being a criminal, she is being prosecuted for lying on a trivial form at a website that few take seriously.
They are trying to see what they can get away with. You know, to see how far they can bend the law to allow them to arrest anyone they don't like.
They can't make it law to arrest people they don't like so instead they simply take an existing law and bend it to find a way to arrest people they don't like. Sure it starts with pedophiles and "bad" people, but eventually it will apply to anyone who uses the internet at all.
There are solutions to this but I must say, the geek community is asleep at the wheel this time. Being anonymous has to be a right, otherwise people will not say what they truly believe and the internet will become pretty much useless as a forum of free expression.
Just imagine when all the political sites are monitored to the point where people are reading lines from a script. You wont even be able to discuss stuff on slashdot anymore because slashdot will be filled with cybercops.
You appear to be using an alias, would like to come with us for a little while. -TLA(Three Letter Agency)
Funny, but it brings up a good point.
I was under the impression that using an Alias is not a crime, unless you are using it to perform an illegal act.
Is this no longer the case?
I think if they can apply this to her then they can use this as a way to get pretty much all of us on slashdot since all of us are using an alias.
Myspace pretty much hates all privacy rights. While what happened to that girl was morally wrong, if it wasn't illegal you can't simply invent a law that didn't exist, or bend the law to make it illegal. And when stuff like that does happen I see it happening more for political reasons than moral or legal.
So now they can wiretap us without a warrent and we want them to also be able to arrest us and give us 5 years in prison for any trivial reason they feel like? Seems like the best way to kill the internet is by declaring war on it and making use of the internet as risky as selling and using drugs.
They want the power to arrest people for virtual crimes. This is a completely new government power being invented as we speak.
I guess there aren't enough real criminals on the internet so we have to invent new jobs for cybercops. Now we will have cops scanning sites to see who violates terms of service.
What does Myspace offer it's users? Nothing!
Myspace is a service designed to assist stalkers but putting all your most private information in one place. So now the stalkers are mad because people aren't putting their real information on Myspace (thus they are harder to stalk through the net), so now the terms of service says you must help them stalk you or face 5 years in prison.
Considering the terms of service, only a complete idiot will use Myspace now.
So the solution, if Myspace says it's illegal, stop using Myspace.
Do we really need an online address book? It was a stupid idea from the beginning.
Oh boy, the US Feds are at it again. Power-grabing J@ck@$$es. This is obviously a case of stalking, and state laws and state district attornies have some prosecuting to do if it should be done at all.
The Feds are going to have a tough battle -- they'll have to _prove_ that Lori violated the MySpace ToS in the absence of a MySpace complaint. MySpace can be brutally cross-examined and serious doubt generated about exactly what the ToS could possibly mean when they are utterly unenforced even by simple, available means ($1 cr.card charge) albeit for some reduction in customer base.
Watch lyin'Lori walk in the face of yet another botched prosecution. So many of these I wonhder if they're not deliberate, to erode liberty.
Of course they are deliberate! If you can create virtual crimes you can have virtual criminals and cyber taxes.
It's nice to see everyone leap up on the bandwagon and accept the notion that this creepy woman drove an innocent kid to suicide. I'm I the only one who thinks the story entirely too pat?
Nasty postings on myspace.com are hardly going to make me do myself in. If this girl killed herself over something so utterly trivial, I should think that a little investigation would uncover someone with a pre-existing case of severe depression.
I'm not saying the woman wasn't an awful, scheming witch; I'm sure she was and is. But charging her with manslaughter as some have suggested in other posts is absurd. Most of the charges appear to be largely trumped-up political offenses; she's unpopular and must therefore be punished.
Nobody wants to discuss the issue, but the girl clearly had serious mental health problems.
Think about it.
If this had happened offline she wouldn't be charged with anything. They are doing this as a power grab, to attack the internet.
Plenty of teens commit suicide after being bullied in school and they don't charge the bully with anything.
Yes. That's a very good way to put what I was saying. It is crucial for some people sometimes. It is validly but questionably useful for many more people many more times. But it's expensive and I wanted to point out that cost, a thing that I think gets forgotten or dismissed around here far too readily. I'm very wary of words like "evil" but overall, yes, you've definitely got it right.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Ah, but increasingly (and by the example of the US government), we see that the ends do justify the means.
If you're protecting children or claiming what you're doing is for national security, then you have done the Right And Noble Thing (tm) and are in the clear. Trying to log into the New York Times or MySpace without a valid ID, not so much -- you're a terrorist and can go to jail.
That double-edged blade carries with it a double standard. The 'good' guys can do bad things and have no consequence -- the rest of us get hosed for saying to MySpace "NOYFB who I am".
It's only a felony if we disagree with your reasons for it, and if the media companies haven't given their permission. Everything else is fair game.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So under this interpretation it sounds like it might be a felony for the pedophile trappers to use aliases and misrepresent their identity. In fact, if it does, it might call into question the means and evidence by which some people were arrested, and convicted. Mistrial time?
Umm myspace cant change the laws. They only have a EULA.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Wait, you're saying that confidence tricksters of any type are not violating any laws? And that is modded insightful? Damn... I guess Wall Street hustlers and child abusers will be really happy with that!
This woman knew the fragile nature of this adolescent child. Adolescent girls are very susceptible to this kind of attack. She was a neighbor and the outcome should have been predictable to this mother of a teenage girl. they were supposed to be friends. This woman killed this girl, flat out. She knew what she was doing. She may not have meant to push her over the edge, but she definitely was trying to hurt the girl. If you intentionally hurt someone and they die as a result that's usually called manslaughter.
I doubt that this'll survive even at the trial level if her defense attorney hasn't forget everything about unconscionability since graduating law school years ago.
I'm no lawyer, so I ask, how does unconscionability factor into this? I'm guessing you're saying the prosecutor is the one acting unconscionably, since I can hardly see the unconscionability in MySpace's actions.
What is the prosecutor doing that's unconscionable? Unconscionability doesn't just mean "unfair"—you generally (massive simplification here) need to either draw a parallel to something that's already been recognised as unconscionable, or show it's so grossly unfair that the court can go out on a limb and declare it unconscionable. I don't see how either applies to what the prosecutor is doing. It would be stretching the words to say "the prosecutor is acting unconscionably by pressing these charges" if the prosecutor believes she probably (whatever the correct words are) did violate the law. Unconscionability isn't the doctrine courts use to throw out unmeritorious charges.
I do think your conclusion is correct though. The law was meant to stop unauthorised access to computer systems, not to punish people for not giving their true name in cases where they're not required by law to do so. A conviction here would go so far outside the purpose of these laws, all but the most hardcore by-the-words judge would say to the prosecutor "sorry, try again".
If I remember correctly, don't you lose your right to vote if you're convicted of a felony? This consequence would be another factor weighing against a conviction. Providing false details to harass someone is bad behaviour, but school bullying shouldn't lead to losing your right to vote.
If causing distress were a crime, people would be too scared to get a hostile divorce!
Bosses might be to scared to fire their employees.
Shows like Scare Tactics or Candid Camera would be illegal!
I understand the desire to get some justice for the poor girl who committed suicide. But how much is reasonable? How about public shame with possibilities of losing one's means of livelihood? Is that enough? Is 10 years in prison enough? Should this be a criminal matter at all? I'm sceptical of rushing to create legal precedents in knee-jerk responses.
People play cruel pranks all the time. If she should be punished, so should all of them. You'd have never even heard of her if the dumb bitch hadn't gone emo and killed herself. I'm not heartless, I've just seen a lot worse behavior that's "perfectly acceptable" because someone didn't decide to go lights-out over it.
In many states, there is a legal claim called intentional infliction of emotional distress, which applies when someone tries to purposefully cause distress.
Three points:
1) IIED is a civil tort; not a criminal offense. That's for the family to pursue.
2) IIED claims are often VERY hard to meet the standard for, often requiring a "shocks the conscience" standard. While this case is egregious and almost certainly would meet any jurisdiction's test, going with IIED alone is a risky strategy.
3) Going with IIED alone is not always an option -- IIED is often a parasitic tort that requires some other tortious act be committed.
At any rate, point #1 kind of makes points #2-3 irrelevant. As I replied elsewhere, res judicata means that who try *everything* you can at once instead of picking and choosing the case you think would work best or else you lose the ability to try the other cases later.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Contracts of adhesion are the type of contract most likely to trigger this doctrine because they almost always represent strongly inequitable bargaining power between the parties.
If MySpace itself was suing her, then unconscionability (if any) would be a factor against them. In that case, you could make a stink about MySpace's unconscionable conduct in inducing her to enter into the standard-form agreement.
However, the prosecutor here is not suing her to enforce a contract, they're seeking to punish her for accessing a computer which did not give her authority to access it under false credentials. The site agreement is just evidence that she was not authorised to access it under false details. Her access to the system under false details is not affected by any unconscionable conduct by the prosecutor, and you'd have a hard time arguing MySpace's unconscionable conduct made her provide false details.
criminal sanctions for breaching a contract are basically completely unheard of.
You're looking too narrowly. Examples of criminal law backing up civil law are rare because you can't consent to most things that are criminal (I can't agree to let you stab me, for example).
Consider, though, an example from copyright law. Say I love the letter "z" so much, I am privately willing to grant redistribution rights to my book for anybody with the letter "z" in their name. Knowing this, you come up to me, pretending your name was Zaphod, and obtain a distribution licence where I say "I agree to let you, Zaphod, distribute my book only because your name has a z in it." You go on to mass publish my book. I later find out your real name is not Zaphod, and that your real name has no zs in it. The distribution licence would be invalid (vitiated by fraud), and you'd be liable for copyright infringement. In Australia, copyright infringement is a criminal offence in addition to being a civil one. I could probably press criminal charges in addition to just seeking damages.
A company can set terms of use for their service as they see fit. People using the service have agreed to these terms (through performance) and are subject to them. If they breach the terms, instead of demanding payment, the right to sever the contract, and/or the right to perform specific performance, the company can instead turn to the government and have the person criminally prosecuted for violating their contract.
Not quite. The law goes more along the lines of "if you access a computer system without authorisation, you are criminally liable". Just like if you paint on my wall without authorisation, you are criminally liable for graffiti. The contract just defines under what circumstances access will be "authorised". If you go outside the contract, then in that law's eyes, you might as well be in someone's house without their permission.
a smart defense attorney would defend this charge on the grounds of the precedent it would set in contract law. If the law is valid, then contract would give MySpace unconscionable negotiating power -- conform to a non-negotiable contract or go to jail.
MySpace would not have an unconscionable level of negotiating power because she could always have chosen not to sign up. It's not like they are the monopoly supplier of air on Mars.
Therefore, this portion of the contract is nullified and there is thus no valid and legal contract language to support the government's claim that there was an applicable access restriction.
That would require a finding that the particular term was void from the start. If MySpace were acting unconscionably, there's no reason to think merely striking out the access restriction parts would make it fair again. More likely, she would be entitled to having the whole contract declared either void from the start, or void from the date of the judgment.