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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.'"
I agree. Get off the Internet. It's too dangerous. Everyone from AOL on - get the hell off.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
She's an asshole, but this is a bullshit conviction and as the article describes....it hurts everybody.
America is a country of Laws, until butthurt turds scream for revenge. Then fuck the law and rational application of said law...we's gonna get some revenge!
Bye bye free speech...
Blar.
I agree, but there was no need for this.
She should have been sued for wrongful death. She would have spent the rest of her life paying whatever she makes to the family of that little girl and the rest of us wouldn't have had our rights trampled in the process.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
A 49yo woman subjects a 13yo neighbor to humiliation and emotional torment. Why wasn't this prosecuted as a case of felony child abuse?
WTF? She pretended to be an "internet boyfriend" and then told the girl she didn't want to talk to her anymore. She didn't put rat poison in her coffee. No-one is responsible for the death of a person who commits suicide, except the person who commits suicide. Oh, no, life is too hard. A boy I've never met (and didn't even really exist) doesn't like me anymore, where's the sleeping pills?
How we know is more important than what we know.
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
Make a new law, call it the Lori Drew law, and have that law make what she did specifically illegal.
The prosecution twisted the existing laws, which I cannot abide. This conviction should be over-turned.
That's how our system of law works.
Blar.
Of course, had this been a man talking to a 13-year old girl and pretending to be her boyfriend......
"Have a seat over here"
When I was young I occasionally suffered actual bullying--as in, with fists. Cyberbullying is a head-scratcher for me: how is it that saying mean things to someone is worse when done on the internet than when it is done face-to-face? Children say mean things to one another all the time and it seems to me that the adults don't do much about it until a fight comes to blows. Or to suicide. That an adult would engage in cyberbullying is bizarre, and wrong, and I maybe there should be a law against it (how would you word this law?). But it's inappropriate to hold her responsible for the child's response, which no one would have predicted. If there is no law that properly applies to her behavior then the judge shouldn't instate a new legal theory just to provide a punishment in one case--not if the precedent could have serious chilling effects on many other people.
So? A normal, well adjusted person will immediately disregard such a statement to be false. The fact that the suicide victim was not a normal well adjusted person is not the fault of Lori Drew.
Depression is a disease. It is not the "fault" of any one person or circumstance. Blaming Lori Drew for the victim's depression would be like blaming McDonald's for heart attacks caused by fatty foods. Sure, McDonald's bears some responsibility for serving such fare, and likewise, Lori Drew bears some responsibility for her words. But does the level of responsibility rise to a criminal level? I don't think so. Just like one has the ability to choose what one eats, one also has the ability to choose what words one listens to. The fact that the victim chose to listen to her is no fault of Lori Drew's.
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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1) People are not blaming Lori Drew for the depression in the young girl.
2) Inflicting this sort of mental anguish to someone who is clinically depressed is like feeding sugary treats by the bucket to someone with diabetes or lighting up cigarettes for someone with lung cancer.
Drew should have been put before a judge - I totally agree with that. Doing it for computer fraud is the wrong charges. If they didn't stick, she would be off scott free. If they do stick they open up the nasties can of worms on the rest of us just to punish this woman.
The fact that the victim chose to listen to her is no fault of Lori Drew's.
That's pretty close to saying that cigarette companies have nothing to do with smokers dying of cancers and other smoking related illness.
Again, my view is that the entire thing is a tragedy, one that wouldn't have happened had people not been so mean/stupid/whatever but charging them with computer fraud is not the right way to go about righting the wrongs that they did.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Suppose I purposefully throw a baseball at your head, hard enough to sting a normal person, but not hard enough to cause serious damage.
You happen to have an unusually thin skull, and die. It's not my fault you have a thin skull, so would you say I'm not responsible for your death?
What if I know you have a thin skull? Does that change anything?
Drew is not being blamed for the victim's depression. She is being blamed for taking actions that used that depression to kill the victim. Just like the hypothetical with my baseball and your thin skull, I would not be blamed for your thin skull--I would be blamed for throwing the baseball that killed you.
If you go around chucking baseballs at people's heads, you run the risk of running into someone with a thin skull, and then you have to pay the price. I don't see why tormenting teenage girls online should be any different. Drew wanted to harm the girl, and she happened to cause more harm then she may have intended. Too bad for Drew--that's the gamble she took, and she lost.
(The law will take into account the likelihood of a thin skull in the baseball example, so if thin skulls are so rare that a reasonable person would not consider them a possibility when deciding whether to go around chucking baseballs at people, then you might not face liability for the death. But depressed teenage girls aren't that rare, so that defense won't fly here).
That's pretty close to saying that cigarette companies have nothing to do with smokers dying of cancers and other smoking related illness.
They don't.
Neither do alcohol companies have anything to do with alcohol related deaths.
Neither do car companies have anything to do with driving related deaths.
Neither do skiing companies have anything to do with skiing deaths.
What is so fucking hard to understand here? Everything has risk, if you choose to engage in an activity then it is your choice and you are responsible.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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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Guilty of what exactly?
You and I are not bound by any particular relationship here. So if I tell you it would be a good idea for you to kill a puppy, and then you go kill a puppy, for what am I to be held accountable? I didn't help you kill the puppy. I didn't make any decision for you. You should know that killing puppies is inherently harmful. That leaves us with the crime of hurting someone else's feelings.
That's the crime that has been committed here. Emotional abuse, not murder.