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Groklaw Summarizes the Lori Drew Verdict
Bootsy Collins writes "Last Wednesday, the Lori Drew 'cyberbullying' case ended in three misdemeanor convictions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1986 US Federal law intended to address illegally accessing computer systems. The interpretation of the act by the Court to cover violations of website terms of service, a circumstance obviously not considered in the law's formulation and passage, may have profound effects on the intersection of the Internet and US law. Referring to an amicus curiae brief filed by online rights organizations and law professors, PJ at Groklaw breaks down the implications of the decision to support her assertion that 'unless this case is overturned, it is time to get off the Internet completely, because it will have become too risky to use a computer.'"
Orin Kerr, one of Lori Drew's attorneys, is a regular blogger at the libertarian legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy.
http://volokh.com/
He has a summary here:
"What does the Lori Drew Verdict Mean?"
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_23-2008_11_29.shtml#1227728513
and has updated the blog's terms of use:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_23-2008_11_29.shtml#1227896387
The internet has no privacy whatsoever, everything you do can be tracked. This has been true since day one when they turned on ArpaNet, and it will continue to be true.
To hear that from someone on slashdot just makes me laugh. There's a million ways to be anonymous from open WiFi (even the retards should have that one figured out) to misconfigured proxies, mixmaster networks, freenet, TOR, JAP and a host of other possibilities for anyone that wants real anonymity.
Even if you encrypt your traffic, it can't hide heavy usage, and you cannot hide from your ISP when you are online any more then you can hide making a phonecall from your telecom provider.
Between my encrypted bittorrent connections which run 24/7, they certainly couldn't by volume alone and all it'd take would be a way to piggy-back over a similar connection to run normal internet services.
Of course, it won't do you any good when you got your whole life on a semi-public blog/facebook/myspace page anyway, but that's not a technical problem...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
For child abuse charges to apply, the adult has to be in direct contact with the child. I'm not too sure on the specifics, but it doesn't sound like Lori Drew ever really came into direct contact with Megan Meier. It seems that all of their interaction was over the Internet.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Check out the Wikipedia Page for the whole case.
last message sent by Evans read: "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." Investigators did not find a record of this message.
It was NOT Lori who sent this message. It was Evans. In fact, if you do some quick Googling, you can find that it was in fact Evans who sent most of the messages! Sure Lori knew about all the messages and laughed, but she was not the one who sent them. It's because the stupid knob gobs who gave Evans immunity for testifying that Lori is getting prosecuted right now. They have to prosecute SOMEONE - the easiest and closest person to get anything to stick to was Lori.
Also, everyone is forgetting that Megan killed herself DIRECTLY after having a argument with her mother about profane language used on MySpace messages to "Josh". The mother scolded her emotionally unstable daughter and sent her to her room, where she proceeded to hang herself. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia page:
Other troubling messages were sent; some of Megan's messages were shared with others; and bulletins were posted about her.[4] After telling her mother, Christina "Tina" Meier, about the increasing number of hurtful messages, 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.
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PJ didn't blame the mom for Megan's death, but pointed out how the very laws that were twisted to punish Drew could just as easily be used to convict her mother. But you must admit that there is a certain amount of responsibility that her mother has for what eventually happened to her. She had attempted suicide before but was left alone while she was clearly upset.
'Simple spankings' have been treated as assault in a lot of places for years. They were 'thinking of the children.'
Isn't Evans the fictitious person created by Lori Drew? I would just assume you were joking except for the mod of informative.
Oh snap, thanks for the catch. My bad. Replace Evans with "Ashley Grills" in my post. I was mixing the names up! Ashley was Lori's employee that got granted the immunity - who is under psychiatric care right now for sending the messages.
"Josh Evans" was the 'fictitious person' like you stated.
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That was his point.
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
The doctrine of the thin-skulled plaintiff only applies to damages. It cannot create liability for an act that is not a tort to begin with. So yeah, if you bean someone with a baseball and they die because they had a thin skull, you're liable for wrongful death. But if you accidentally bump into them in the subway and they die because they're especially fragile, you're not liable because your actions didn't constitute a tort to begin with.
Way to not read the article. Lori Drew is the mother of the girl whose friend did all of this from their house. Not the culprit, not the culprit's mom, the culprit's friend's mom. Anyway, she's not being charged with trying to get someone to kill themselves, she's being charged with violating the ToS of Myspace. That's what makes this dangerous. If violating Myspace's ToS is criminal, any owner of any website can write the law for those who visit their website.
Being punched or kicked is unlikely to leave you unscarred emotionally, either.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
We live under the rule of law, not under the rule of justice. They should have prosecuted her for harassment instead of trying to shoehorn her offenses into cybercrime law.
But (if I read TFA correctly) she was acquitted from contributing to someone's death; the federal crime she's getting nailed with is entirely about doing things on the internet.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Speaking as (one of the few) Internet lawyers, and an Internet policy person, the hand-wringing hysterics coming out of this are ridiculous. Online services and sites can *already* sue people for ToS violations - they always could (it's a breach of contract). And a prosecutor isn't going to waste their time trying to criminalize a ToS violation when no action of a criminal nature has occurred. This was a *very* unusual case. To read our full analysis, see our article here: http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/internet-in-uproar-over-verdict-for-lori-drew-in-megan-meier-teen-suicide-case