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MySpace Suicide Charges Threaten Free Speech
Naturalist recommends a piece up at Ars about a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the EFF, CDT, Public Citizen, and a group of 14 law professors in the case of Lori Drew, who posed as a teenage boy to harass another teen online, eventually driving her to suicide. (We've discussed the case a few times.) "[The amicus brief argues] that violating MySpace's Terms of Service agreement shouldn't be considered criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The groups believe that if the mother, Lori Drew, is prosecuted using CFAA charges, the case could have significant ramifications for the free speech rights of US citizens using the Internet."
The facts in this particular case point to a truly twisted individual, but this individual is unable to be prosecuted for major jail time under current, non "novel" interpretations of law. The proper thing to do is to note this case, and realize the perpetrator is not guilty of a felony, and create a new law to handle this case, rather than trying to find some way to twist the law to put this person in jail "for something", which will open the floodgates of abuses.
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Does not mean she has to be charged with 'cyber' crimes that can fuck the rest of us.
Get her for some form of child abuse or something, DON'T try to take MY rights away just because of some twat got bored with her soap operas.
in my opinion. You do not have the right to torment an individual like this anymore than you have a right to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater or "I have a bomb" in an airport. AT some point, the safety of others does override your right to "free" speech.
Bad events make bad laws. Just read the story below this one. Though this may be more in the way of bad case law. That said, I think this woman's behavior is so beyond the pale that she deserves to be featured in a Lifetime movie at the least. And her head stuck on a pike to remind the next 5 generations that some behaviors are so reprehensible that you shouldn't do them.
You're not likely to have an ongoing conversation with a fictitious person through the mail to the point that you think of them as your boyfriend.
The nature of the internet does make kinds of assholish behavior possible that were previously impractical.
There should be nothing that compels this case to be brought up under ANY modern legislation pertaining computers. Computers and social networking were the means of the harassment... this does not mean there are any new concepts here.
Harassment and emotional abuse can be performed in person or over the Internet, and I've got to imagine that charges for wanton malicious actions against a minor will have much stiffer penalties than a simple ToS violation.
I don't mean to be too jaded here, but it doesn't much sense to me to be bringing an uncertain case against someone with a new law, unless the prosecuting attorney is seeking a landmark decision to put on a resume.
Certainly there must be a better choice than a new law when the actions of one lead another (esp. a minor) to suicide?
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You clearly don't have kids - most teenagers these days won't let their parents into their life. Not because the parents are bad, but because society (advertising?) encourages teenagers to be self-sufficient and live their own life.
Sometimes, all the parents can do is be supportive and listen when their kid doesn't want to talk. If the kid won't talk to his/her parents... what did you want the parents to do? Tie them up and force them to speak?
Anyways, my point is that Good Parents don't always have good kids. And parents (unfortunately) can't always get their kids to open up and talk to them.
I guess your mom would kick you out of her basement if you were rebellious, so I can't expect you to understand.
> You do not have the right to torment an individual like this anymore than you have a right to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater or "I have a bomb" in an airport. AT some point, the safety of others does override your right to "free" speech.
Sure, but the problem is that there's no law for it yet, so they're making one up that WILL threaten free speech.
That's the problem. I have no problem with sending her to jail for making someone's life hell. I do have a problem with abusing the law to do that.
The girl's family should sue this woman in Civil Court for the wrongful death of their daughter. The burden of proof is much lower in civil court than in criminal, and they could ruin this woman for the rest of her life -- which is a hell of a lot more than she deserves, because she still gets to draw breath, but their daughter doesn't. And there daughter would still be alive today if not for this woman's depraved actions.
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Fucking whimpy generation of losers.
Yeah, that emo thing really needs to die.
'Oh wah, my middle-upper middle class lifestyle, complete parents who care, a nice house in a decent neighborhood, and a decent amount of material wealth is just so horrible. People hate me just for no reason, not because I whine nonstop about nonexistent problems I saw on TV. Oh, woe is me!'
These self-centered assholes really need to get over themselves and get a life.
If someone harasses you IRL, who do you blame? The... air that carried their words to your ears?
No, you blame the person who's harassing you, which is exactly what's going on in this case. Like it says in your own quote, the case is against the woman whose harassment drove this girl to suicide, not the web site she used as a medium.
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Teenage suicide is down lower than it has been for years. We have given teenagers the tools to reach out to other peers and express their feelings. Suicide is a real problem that has been arround long before social networks and will remain long after.
In the case of an adult posing as a young teenager to manipulate and violate the poor teenage girl, tipping her over the edge of an already uneasy situation and pushing her to suicide is murder!
Kids are mean to other kids, thats the nature of the game, if you want to stop bullying you would have to stop teenage social interaction at the playground!
My point to this rambling, Society is at fault, not the internet and not freedom of speech.
This is Slashdot. I bet 90% of us here would have come into contact with bullying or emotional harassment. Sure we've gotten our own back, but when you're a kid things are different. While I think the OP is being a little insensitive, I don't think you can draw a line from "Internet boyfriend acting like a dickhead" to "Ok I'm going to commit suicide".
Suicide is not a natural response to bullying, especially when that's not even face-to-face, which is what we experienced. If it was, most of us wouldn't be here. Either the girl had other problems which lead to her suicide (likely) or she was simply mentally unstable. In either of those cases the medium through which the straw that broke the camels back travelled is not relevant.
You have the right to say anything, and be heard, however, what you say can get you into trouble.
If you don't like the war, and you protest, and make speeches that the war is bad, and that you think the president is mistaken, that's protected under the freedom of speech.
If you don't like the war, and you protest, and make threats against the president, then you will be held accountable and the threats will be taken seriously.
If you are a psychiatrist whose job it is to help people through emotional problems, and you tell your client - you're fucked up, chances are that not only will the patient not get better, but you will be sued, and if something happens to the patient, like suicide, then chances are you will be prosecuted in some form or other.
If you are a normal person, who, by using a false identity, abuses someone or their character in such a way that it erodes their self-esteem, sense of self-worth, sense of self, to such a degree that they commit suicide, then you are most definitely guilty of abuse, both mental and emotional abuse, and should be held accountable as contributing to the death of said person.
This would be the case regardless of the technology used. The only thing this technology granted was a sense of anonymity that was properly given up due to the bizarre circumstances of the case.
If you were to stand at your fence in your backyard and belittle the child-next-door, calling them names, worthless, pieces of garbage, day in and day out, chances are you'd be faced with at least a law-suit if not a visit by the police. Why would doing this over the internet be any different? Should someone who intentionally abuses another person be protected just because they used the internet to do it? Should they expect a right to privacy or anonymity just because they tried to hide their identity before making those actions? I don't think so, and would hope that you wouldn't as well.
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It's a hormone thing, and psychological development thing. Hormones at that age basically magnify emotions, and that causes overcompensation and confusion. Lack of psychological development is even simpler: When you're older, you've got the experience of this exact situation to know it's not worth killing yourself over.
Supercharged emotions plus mass confusion over new and disturbing experiences leads to mental breakdown. Must be nice; my brain is so damn hardened I've been through the most horrible emotional experiences and, looking back, still wish I would have killed myself. I will always do everything in my power to preserve my own life; but I can totally understand what would have to happen to someone to make them run screaming from any chance of seeing the next day, and the old bitch playing the cute neighbor boy set that girl up for the ABSOLUTE BEST WAY to do that.
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Suicide is not a natural response to bullying, especially when that's not even face-to-face, which is what we experienced.
Imagine your whole life is changed because you met one girl. Everything you thought mattered is irrelevant, and the only thing you want is to be with her, and take care of her. You get comfortable, it looks like you can make it happen, you work so hard, she smiles, she laughs. You start to realize you never really knew joy or happiness, and that you truly understand what life is about now.
Next day. She hates you. End of story.
Your life is now nothing. The pain is massive. Emotional pain can strip you of everything; no form of physical torture can compare. It will consume and destroy you; if it passes a certain point and you DON'T kill yourself off, you'll be left a hollow shell incapable of really recovering. You'll live a life lost, where everything seems pale and insignificant, incomplete, and you smile at the simple things when you can but still find no satisfaction in the finer joys of being alive.
When someone's already having emotional trouble, and is going through a hormonal/emotional development stage, and is lacking emotional growth experience to cope, they're ripe for crafting this exact situation. Probably not enough to really trash their life if they survive it, but enough to make it obvious to them that life isn't worth living right now.
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She didn't know it was an adult bullying her. And it wasn't even a "stupid jock type" in a school environment. It was someone acting like a douche bag via text. Words.
My point is that kids get bullied everyday. Face-to-face. They get abused emotionally, physically. That's not a good thing. It's a terrible thing. But it happens, and only a small proportion actually kill themselves. This girl apparently killed herself because someone she'd never met was writing bad words about her. Bullying is not good and it's not acceptable. I'm not that it is. But it's also foolish to pretend that this one particular case is all that's needed to make someone commit suicide.
That's why I think there were other problems with this girl - be they other forms of bullying at school or some kind of mental illness. If the real problem is bullying or mental illness then THOSE are the issues that should be argued about and debated in the media and in Parliament/Congress. Not things like MySpace's Terms and Conditions.
Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden by the Constitution, i.e., you may not make something illegal after the fact and then prosecute for it. Of course, you can craft a law making any future act illegal and, if the individual commits the act AGAIN, can be prosecuted for the new act.
The problem in this case is that this shitty woman did something that was not illegal, just morally reprehensible. The "public" wants retribution, but has no legitimate legal recourse, so prosecutors must make a wild-ass no-common-sense-used interpretation of an existing law that no sane, mature, reasonable person could make an argument to support so they may prosecute her. If she is financially poor, she will be unable to appeal and will be "punished", but could she appeal, she would likely eventually be exonerated because of the savage and unreasonable torture the prosecution must apply to existing law to make this a criminal case.
It's simply not worth sacrificing our constitutional rights and civility to grind out revenge on this piece of shit woman. Only civil court can provide all the revenge that can be squeezed out of this woman, but for the public, that's not enough.
So public lust for revenge and the prosecutions insatiability for pandering to it is now threatening your safety and mine. You want to provide the DHS yet another weapon to use against regular law-abiding citizens? Shame on you.
Imagine your whole life is changed because you met one girl. Everything you thought mattered is irrelevant, and the only thing you want is to be with her, and take care of her. You get comfortable, it looks like you can make it happen, you work so hard, she smiles, she laughs. You start to realize you never really knew joy or happiness, and that you truly understand what life is about now. Next day. She hates you. End of story.
I realise this is Slashdot, and not Lavalife, but I don't need to imagine. My girlfriend of a few years cheated on me. Am I killing myself? No.
This is silly. Sometimes people have to take responsibility for their actions, or maybe look a bit further for what the root causes were of the problem. I'm not trying to understate her death in anyway. I'm trying to say that I find it difficult to believe that her life is just peachy and then when her internet friend whom she's never met says nasty things about her, she commits suicide. I think that this whole "MySpace/Internet/Evil Adult" thing is taking us away from the real discussion which should be about bullying and mental illness.
Imagine your whole life is changed because you met one girl. Everything you thought mattered is irrelevant, and the only thing you want is to be with her, and take care of her. You get comfortable, it looks like you can make it happen, you work so hard, she smiles, she laughs. You start to realize you never really knew joy or happiness, and that you truly understand what life is about now.
That happens to millions of people. Yeah, it hurts for a while, but you either move on, or you get so caught up in yourself that you keep dwelling in something that happens to everyone.
Your life is now nothing. The pain is massive. Emotional pain can strip you of everything; no form of physical torture can compare. It will consume and destroy you; if it passes a certain point and you DON'T kill yourself off, you'll be left a hollow shell incapable of really recovering. You'll live a life lost, where everything seems pale and insignificant, incomplete, and you smile at the simple things when you can but still find no satisfaction in the finer joys of being alive.
What? You're joking, right? That's pretty self-centered, ain't it? To compare something so temporary with actual torture, to say that something so common will take all joy out of your life. If what you say were true, NO ONE would be happy.
When someone's already having emotional trouble, and is going through a hormonal/emotional development stage, and is lacking emotional growth experience to cope, they're ripe for crafting this exact situation. Probably not enough to really trash their life if they survive it, but enough to make it obvious to them that life isn't worth living right now.
No. If someone really kills themselves over that, they were either raised to think they're the only human in existence, or there is something else massively wrong in their lives. I'm not trying to sound cold to the girl, but as far as I can tell, suicide is caused more by self absorption that this 'pain' you speak of. Either way, the parent poster is correct; suicide is not a natural response to bullying.
I think the point is that an adult with a fully developed brain deliberately set out to screw with a kid. Kids may do the same, but they're unlikely to be as competent at the manipulation because they don't have the perspective provided by experience and maturation of the brain.
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I don't mean offence to you, but what you're saying is kind of silly. Your logic goes "Well it was her first boyfriend and she was teen. So therefore she committed suicide. And if you were a teen and it was your first girlfriend, you would also have committed suicide".
If that was the case, a lot of people wouldn't be alive. Why can't you just accept that I find it extremely hard to believe that being dumped by an online boyfriend who said mean things about her was the only thing that went wrong in her life and was the only factor in her suicide?
Yes that's also a problem. And she should probably be charged with harassment or something like that. But she isn't. Instead we're setting stupid precedents with far-reaching ramifications that won't do anything to stop bullying or punish bullies.
Seriously, my only point has been that the problem is bullying. Let's focus on that. If there isn't a criminal charge for the pre-mediated and long-term harassment of a child by an adult then there should be. Deal with that problem before screwing up things you don't understand.
You know, if they lock the woman up in the right cell, she'll probably get bullied and harrassed herself. Maybe it would actually be a way for the punishment to fit the crime. You know, as long as they don't kill her.
Imagine your whole life is changed because you met one girl. Everything you thought mattered is irrelevant, and the only thing you want is to be with her, and take care of her. You get comfortable, it looks like you can make it happen, you work so hard, she smiles, she laughs. You start to realize you never really knew joy or happiness, and that you truly understand what life is about now.
Next day. She hates you. End of story.
So, the typical high school romance?
And she should probably be charged with harassment or something like that.
There's an old legal axiom that, "hard cases make bad law." This was a hard case in that an adult deliberately harassed a young girl and that harassment caused a nasty result. Since everyone was up in arms against her behavior, which was apparently not within any state or local laws, the prosecutors stretched to find anything that they could charge her with and thus satisfy the "somebody needs to do something" contingent. However, if this charge continues, the bad law will set another precedent to strip another bit of freedom from the rest of us.
Because I don't think the police department was able to find one. Nor was the prosecutor. And I'm pretty sure they know what "assault" and "harassment" are.
But they instead decided to rely on some BS about making breaking a website's Terms of Service into a felony, [...]
You know, a cynical person might say they chose this particular charge in order to try to set a precedent in a case where a jury really won't want to deliver a "not guilty" verdict...
Yep, we all know we need more laws to keep us "safe" from the terminally stupid.
Lets see... if you had kids... how would you raise them? To be offended by losing at kickball and have the "authorities" pass new rules outlawing kickball in school, because, like, gosh, someone's feelings got hurt by losing? To be offended by bullies and whine to "authority figures" to save them? I know this is the wrong forum to ask reasonable attitude and problem questions like these. Seems almost obvious, if you're defending the terminally stupid, and their idiot parents who were too busy to raise their kid to be strong enough to make it, you'll probably end up defending such idiocy as "the government should make it illegal to harass the terminally stupid until they do what they'd do eventually ayways."
Because we all know we need MORE laws and punishment for harmless hazing crap that ALL of us put up with. And it was painful until we either learned, or had it taught to us (if our minds were capable of learning and thus surviving) that what other people think is usually pretty worthless. Most people are willing victims and have been raised by the current societies to be WAITING victims and victim worshipers. You'll have to pardon me from abstaining from the rampant victim worship. Willing victims are to be detested not worshiped. Its like the jews who willingly got on those trains, or the japanese who willingly got interned in the USA, or the fools in germany who surrendered their arms to the authorities or the fools who didn't put up a sign "trespassers will be shot" in New Orleans during Katrina. You don't let the bullies know to stop early, or STOP them... and you end up a victim.
Most people today aspire to be good little dogs, to obey, and to hopefully never get kicked. But guess what... shit happens. The only way shit will NOT happen, is to be locked up in a padded cell... and even then your jailers will mistreat you.
Just like reading an article about some idiot who hurt himself by not wearing eye protection while using power tools. What is the headline?? "New regulations may be necessary for construction sites."
Gee, you mean the huge OSHA bureaucracy couldn't stop one retard who wasn't wearing his recommended gear, namely eye protection? What the hell more can be done to keep the stupid safe from their stupidity? hell we shouldn't even be paying to keep stupids in good health. Their fully deserved darwinian deserts would be to be permitted to fully enjoy the fruits of their stupidity... and I should fully enjoy the fruits of my labors, as should you and everyone else. Instead we have to pay taxes to keep "lawmakers" in their non productive labors of telling us how to walk and talk around stupids. Yep, more political correctness. As if there wasn't enough.
Some day, all this shit will blow back. I just hope its before I have kids. I really don't want any child of mine growing up amongst this pathetic generation of weaklings. Hell if I raise them right they'll be punished for being "insensitive"... "let the other kids win a turn"... "oh now we have to make that game illegal too, because winning damages self esteem for the losers."
I mean damn... I'm not that old, but when I grew up, losing was something to learn from (I agree that few do, the proper victim mindset is to get depressed when losing, and its a mindset that is inculcated by movies, literature and school)... in school it was always frowned upon to make mistakes... outside of school mistakes were crucial and very useful. I believe that old greek fellow who shouted Eureka had spilled something, hadn't he?
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If Lori Drew had used a voice changer and a prepay cellphone I honestly believe all of America would be out to lynch her by now. What makes the internet so different?
Lori mounted a systematic and cruel attack to inflict emotional harm on a minor over a period of months. This goes far beyond name calling or a prank. It was deliberate and it was designed to harm. The tools used to harass have little to do with the case in my opinion.
Is Lori is responsible for the child's death? Perhaps, but how do you determine the weight of her contribution? I for one have no idea and personally believe no one can say that with any certainty.
What seems rather clear to me is an act of child abuse, harassment, and fraud.
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Lots of teens commit suicide every year. "In a survey of high school students, the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center found that almost 1 in 5 teens had thought about suicide, about 1 in 6 teens had made plans for suicide, and more than 1 in 12 teens had attempted suicide in the last year."
And yeah sure, you could whine about number rigging and high school students not seriously filling out the forms or just trying to make an image, but the fact is that suicide isn't the rarity that you make it out to be. This is why we have suicide hotlines and the like.
1. At a quick googlin, 16.3% of the deaths in males aged between 15-24 is suicide. Way ahead of, say, cancer at 6.8% or heart disease at 3.9%. That was a statistic for 1998, but I don't expect things to have changed too dramatically. Apparently in Australia in 2005, two thirds of the deaths between 12 and 24 years old were suicides. Two thirds. That's immense.
So it's not an entirely unnatural response to stress and depression, either. It happens.
2. Well, yes. And the perpetrator deliberately used that.
Yes, some people are more fragile than others. That doesn't excuse preying on them.
To give some analogies, just because some old lady barely walks to a walking stick, it may make it easier to snatch her purse and run away, but it doesn't make it more morally justifiable. Just because someone is in a wheelchair, it may make it easier to mug him (I mean, it's not like he's gonna dodge or run away too fast), but again it's not more morally justifiable. Etc.
If anything, from where I stand, it just makes the perpetrator more heartless and worthy of contempt.
In this case the lady _knew_ that the neighbour's girl is depressed and suicidal. She had already talked about suicide in third grade, and was seeing a therapist about it ever since. And she just took it as an invitation to try to actually drive her to suicide. I'm sorry, I can't really see her as anything else than a monster.
3. We're not talking just a random forum flame war, or one mean message or two. Lori Drew spent a whole fucking year first gaining the girl's trust, and then mounting a _massive_ online campaign against her. She not only posted all the girl's secrets, but also produced a storm of messages about how Megan is fat and a _slut_.
More importantly, this is the final message that pushed the girl to suicide: "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you."
I'm sorry, but telling someone who's already massively depressed and suicidal that the world would be better without her...
It's not just callous or insensitive. The whole thing reeks of deliberately creating the setup and then as much stress as possible, to make sure she breaks down. And spending a year for that. A whole year dedicated to killing the neigbour's daughter.
I don't know about you, but in my book that's premeditated murder. The whole sequence of events served only one purpose and achieved it.
4. You _could_ say that the girl could/should have been tough and ignored it, but that still doesn't excuse the perpetrator.
I mean, seriously, if I were to knife you and take your wallet, equally it could be argued that you could/should have been spry and dodged the knife. You could/should have taken some martial arts lessons and disarmed the attacker. It still doesn't excuse the criminal, either way.
Plus, again, she chose a victim who was already known as an easy target for that.
Pretty much. Regardless of the medium involved, it's still a convoluted case of premeditated murder.
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what you are ignoring is that we all have some armor against getting hurt by other people. If you know someone is your enemy then there is less of an effect on you since you know that this person isn't your friend and is just trying to get to you.
Everybody wears masks and mostly you get to see what they want you to see we play roles be it doctor engineer whatever. Mostly people automatically say fine, when asked how are you. It's a ritual you say fine because the other person doesn't want to know most of the time. Most interaction is just role playing.
Love on the other hand tends to go with trust and you share things which makes you vulnerable, your without your armor, you might not share everything probably don't for most of us.
Having a strong emotional bond with someone, means that someone could hurt you beyond anything anybody else could do.
What I'm saying is the person you love the most can hurt you so badly you might commit suicide, most of us will do something less extreme, get drunk or maybe not date for a while.
Experience tells us that relationships fail and you get over it.
This girl did not have this experience and to top it off she wasn't just dumped
but faced an overwhelming assault on her whole emotional being from the person she was closest to.
An interesting legal argument in uk law at least is that you can be found guilty of murder if you procure someone to act as your instrument, ie hire a hitman, or persuade your boyfriend to kill your husband for example.
did "josh" procure megan to act as his instrument to kill megan? Ok "josh" probably didn't want megan dead just seriously hurt. Therefore a lesser charge such as manslaughter (murder in the 3rd degree?) should apply. I should explain Murder carries a mandatory life sentence in the uk, Manslaughter allows a judge considerable leeway in what sentence to apply.
Manslaughter would seem to be a reasonable sentence for the circumstances and actions surrounding megans death.
The issue of bullying in general is a nasty can of worms to open , when does standard working practice become abuse? It isn't easy to define, evidence is hard to obtain and what may be devastating to one individual will have no effect on another.
Finally at Megans age with her lack of experience, the hormonal changes she was experiencing as most teenagers do with the abuse of trust from "josh" Is suicide so surprising?
I would agree though MySpace's terms and conditions should have no bearing on this what so ever.
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I still don't really think that harassment truly caused this. It may have contributed, but no amount of harsh typed words on a website would drive a normal, emotionally healthy person to this. Maybe her upper-class family is in denial that they were too busy to notice the signs that their daughter was having trouble, maybe they did the same thing way too many parents do, leave their children to fend for themselves instead of providing a stable home life and emotional support. There's a lot of "maybes" here, but the bottom line is that this should have been addressed as a whole issue, and persecuting ONE piece of the puzzle this harshly is not the answer.
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