Slashdot Mirror
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.
Well as I doubt that 'Ethanol-fueled' is really your real name you have just commited a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Bad laws often use a scapegoat to justify their existence. Another example would be the recent laws that violate the privacy of Americans to fight against "Pedophiles and Terrorists". A bad law is a bad law is a bad law.
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.
Yes, her actions were despicable, but that doesn't mean we should be misinterpreting laws in order to find some way to punish her.
Our society has gotten lazy with law enforcement. Proving that somebody commented THE crime is hard, and making all really bad behavior is hard. So, we just make it a crime to do silly normal things and selectively enforce the laws. EVERYBODY in America is a criminal - do you think you go through a single day without violating SOMETHING in the Code of Federal Regulations, or any aw passed by any legislature in the last 200 years that hasn't been repealed, or anything contrary to common law? Plus, those laws make a convenient excuse for performing searches/etc (your honor, the grass looked taller than 2.3 inches so I knocked on the front door, and in plain sight it looked like there might have been an illegally-copied CD sitting on the table, and when I walked in to grab it I noticed some cigarette packages on the table in the other room so I went over to check their seals and then I noticed the lamp that could also be used to grow weed and so I called in SWAT to bust open every wall in the place...).
The job of the cops is to figure out who the bad guy is, and the job of the prosecutor is to figure out something in those aforementioned library-filling tomes to pin them with. Gotta love it!
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.
There are SEVERAL things they could get her on: criminal child abuse, coercion of a minor, etc. But no, that would be too much work. Instead, they want to give her felony charges for violating the TOS of a website. I'm all for making sure she's punished, but this is not the way. Have the DA actually DO HIS JOB and not hoist her on something that can set a precedent which can be later used to fuck all of us at will...
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
Let me enlighten you... "Ethanol-fueled" is a screen name, alias, or nick name. When you sign-up for Myspace you are asked to complete a form with your name and identifying information, however you can choose to have a separate and unrelated screen name, alias or nick name. My Yahoo e-mail address, for example, has no relation to my personal name, but I provided my personal name to Yahoo to sign-up for the service.
Since everyone is going haywire about this, let's look at an offline example. If I complete a loan/job/cell phone application and indicate that my name is George Bush (it's not) and provide other false information, I could face legal consequences for providing such false information. Should we get all up in arms about that? Most companies are going to take additional steps to verify my identification before they give me a loan/job/cell phone. Even though they will verify my identity that doesn't make me less liable for providing false information. Either the user is responsible for providing accurate information or the company is responsible for verifying the accuracy of the information provided. Do you want MySpace/Newegg/TigerDirect to call references, run a credit report, or take additional measures to verify your identity or do you want them to accept your promise that you are accurately representing who you are?
Riiiight. Your exactly the reason why this law is being abused.
Your emotional reaction to this young girls death has clouded your judgment. You even admit that the "American Legal system" is "messed up" with regards to technology, but have no problems allowing the law to "malfunction" as long as it hurts Lori Drew. That's hypocritical and a desire for nothing less than mob justice.
What you don't understand is that this would create precedent. This is bigger than Lori Drew and it is bigger than that poor little girl who committed suicide. I am not an "unfeeling monster" either. That little girls death was a horrible tragedy, Lori Drew's actions were unconscionable, and it is a sad commentary on just how degraded society has become.
Terms of Service is a legal contract, a CIVIL agreement, between two parties. To say that the deliberate obsfucation of information while signing that agreement is a felony is outright lunacy. It is at most fraudulent and MySpace would have to prove what damages it incurred as a result of said fraud IN A CIVIL COURT.
Lori Drew's actions with respect to MySpace (and only MySpace) were not remotely "hacking" and not remotely criminal in any sense whatsoever. The only action she committed that should be investigated by the DA is contributing to that little girl's death. I don't know what criminal laws apply to that, but hacking is not one of them.
So although I can understand why you are angry and upset at Lori Drew for her actions, and I empathize with the parents and family of the little girl, it DOES NOT JUSTIFY anyones desire to apply criminal law incorrectly to a civil dispute.
If this precedent were to be created it allow ALL websites the ability to verify your information and forward any disputes about its veracity to the local DA. Having the DA prosecute people for "lying" to MySpace, Google, Yahoo, HotMail, Slashdot, etc. is not in the best interests of our society.
Quite simply put, the fact that Slashdot has NO accurate information regarding me and my account is NOT hacking and it is NOT a crime. If you believe it is, be careful. All somebody has to do is hack your connection at home, create a fake profile at MySpace, notify the authorities and you will be playing the "Mammas and the Pappas" in some prison.
P.S - For those that might not get "Mammas and the Pappas" its a joke and use your imagination.
By your logic, it would be okay to go after someone for driving a car, as long as they drove the car over a few living bodies (whereas the crime is not in driving the car, but in driving the car over the bodies).
If you prosecute one person for the use of a pseudonym, you really need to prosecute everybody for the use of a pseudonym.
(see, I'm comfortable with prosecuting all tax evasion, I'm not comfortable with prosecuting all use of a pseudonym)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.