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Lori Drew Trial Results In 3 Misdemeanor Convictions
grassy_knoll writes "As a follow up to an earlier story, the Lori Drew 'cyber-bullying' trial has resulted in misdemeanor convictions." grassy_knoll quotes from the AP story as carried by Salon: "The Los Angeles federal court jury on Wednesday rejected felony charges of accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress on young Megan Meier.
However, the jury found defendant Lori Drew guilty of three counts of the lesser offense of accessing a computer without authorization.
The jurors could not reach a verdict on a conspiracy count.
Prosecutors said Drew violated the MySpace terms of service by conspiring with her young daughter and a business assistant to create a fictitious profile of a teen boy on the MySpace social networking site to harass Megan.
Megan, who had been treated for depression, hanged herself in 2006 after receiving a message saying the world would be better without her."
Adds reader gillbates: "She now faces up to 3 years in jail and $300,000 in fines — a troubling precedent for anyone who has ever registered with a website under a pseudonym."
She's an asshole though.
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if you sign up under a pseudonym... don't kill anyone.
(and before everyone screams at me, yes I understand just how badly this precedent can be used)
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
a troubling precedent for anyone who has ever registered with a website under a pseudonym.
This has nothing to do with registering under a pseudonym. This has to do with psychological stalking and trauma. Please pull your head out of your ass. I'm sure it's hard to breathe up there.
I don't think that putting her away for life is appropriate, let alone the death penalty.
That being said, I also don't like the idea of an adult conspiring to harass an emotionally unstable child (aren't they all).
This is a good decision, so long as it is upheld. 300K fine and a (relatively) short jail term is enough to ruin a life for anyone not upper class, and will likely act as a deterrent to others that think that conspiring to harass someone online is just fun and games.
Now mod me to oblivion.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
"She now faces up to 3 years in jail and $300,000 in fines - a troubling precedent for anyone who has ever registered with a website under a pseudonym."
I'm not actually troubled much by this at all. This is what happens to someone who falsifies their information to use an online service TO A BAD END.
That's actually a good precedent.
Can it be warped? Sure, but so can everything else. I personally feel that three misdemeanor convictions are a PERFECT fit for what happened, and would like to see similar charges brought against future 'cyber bullies' going forward with similar results. The penalties sound a bit harsh, but I'm sure they will be whittled to 90 days in a white-collar work camp, just as they were for the 'Spam King'.
Sorry, but it's not "murder". It was a terrible thing that she did and she should be punished for it, but it was not actually murder.
In any case, we live under the rule of law. And one consequence of that is that sometimes people do terrible things that are not covered by the law. In that case, these people should go free. It's terrible, but it's vastly superior to the anarchy that results when there is no rule of law.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
All that means is that the law is wrong. Goading someone into killing themselves is murder.
I have no idea why you brought up anarchy. I am advocating that we change our Justice system to actually mete out justice. That doesn't sound like anarchy to me.
It is not justice to allow a murderer to go free. Technicalities are not justice.
In your world, pushing someone off a cliff is OK because you didn't kill them. After all, is it your fault they hit the ground?
It was a terrible thing that she did and she should be punished for it,
Would you argue that she should be punished even if the young girl had just shrugged it off and got on with her life?
The punishment should be based on an act, not on somebody's reaction to that act. Either an action 'ABC' is a crime or it is not - that should not depend on someone's reaction to 'ABC'.
...to me is that it seems the only thing she was really convicted of was "accessing a computer without authorization". Does that mean that if we talked over IRC or some P2P chat or sent an e-mail or whatever where you didn't explicitly agree to a ToS regarding the service, that this would be completely legal? Because if that's the case, it's an absurd penalty for breaking a ToS and pretty wierd that there's no other law to deal with somebody harassing a kid to death. Or maybe I'm completely misreading this?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's an interesting interpretation of the law or morality but I don't think you'll find that it matches the real world even a little bit.
Forget to feed your baby and he cries a lot and shrugs it off: no consequences.
Forget to feed your baby and he dies: you go to prison for a very long time.
Go 25MPH over the speed limit and get caught by a cop: expensive speeding ticket.
Go 25MPH over the speed limit and kill a van full of girl scouts: you go to prison for a very long time.
Plan to kill somebody and screw it up: go to prison for a little while.
Plan to kill somebody and succeed: get the chair.
Need I go on? Outcomes matter.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Am I the only one who cannot understand why they went this stupid direction rather than processing using a relevent law. (Yes I know they said they they could not find any law applicable...)
To me this seems just as bad as when some companyt slaps "on the internet" onto some existing thing and try to patent it/otherwise claim control over it.
Surely mental torture is covered by an existing law. "On the internet" is neither here nor there.
Maybe it's just me but I'm sick of this "on the internet" bollocks.
+----------------- | What is the question!