Judge Tentatively Dismisses Case Against Lori Drew

An anonymous reader writes "According to Wired, 'A federal judge on Thursday overturned guilty verdicts against Lori Drew, and issued a directed acquittal on the three misdemeanor charges.'" A similar story in the L.A. Times notes that "The decision by US District Judge George H. Wu will not become final until his written ruling is filed, probably next week." Update: 07/02 21:15 GMT by T : For those not following, Lori Drew's three convictions sprang from charges of online harassment of Megan Meier, a Missouri teenager whose suicide was linked to Drew's actions.

Comments

Summary is lacking.

[karnal]

As mentioned in the tags, this is a horrible summary. I don't get the feeling I know what Lori was charged with. Is it piracy? Is it shoplifting? Speeding? Drug charges?

Who knows? Not me.

Re:Summary is lacking.

[Midnight Thunder]

I don't get the feeling I know what Lori was charged with.

She killed Michael Jackson.

I get the feeling moderators don't read articles either.

Just for some clarity she was accused of cyber-bullying that lead to a 13 year old girl to commit suicide.

Re:Summary is lacking.

[Midnight Thunder]

I love moderators, they moderate an incorrect post informative and one correcting it redundant? Guys I really believe it should be:

- grand-parent: over-rated
- parent: informative

Dear Tim, and All The Other /. Editors

[coaxial]

You can't just have a one line write up. Who the hell is Lori Drew? Is it really that hard to ad the line: "Lori Drew is the woman who was convicted of using MySpace to tease a 13 year old girl until the girl committed suicide."

Apparently it is.

Re:They should have found a more appropriate charg

[umrguy76]

That's already been decided. To take the classic example, if you yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, you are responsible for the consequences.

Given, of course, that the theater is not actually on fire. =)

Re:you're such a moron

[Draek]

Angry much? I understand perfectly well your point, which is why I can say with full confidence that its stupid.

To put it simply, you don't know what free speech is. Its not meant to protect our ability to say crap like "I love this country!", that's allowed *everywhere*, even in China or Korea. What's meant to protect is our ability to say *unpleasant* things, things you, I or our government may not want to hear, may not want it get said at all. So to state that we wouldn't have the government meddling with our free speech rights if we didn't say "wrong" things is stupid, if they're throwing us in jail for saying the "wrong" thing we didn't have any right to begin with.

Our right is the ability to enjoy our free speech rights, to say whatever we want. Our responsability, the one that comes with it, is to respect other people's free speech rights when *they* say something we don't want to hear. You don't like that, fine, I do, and that's not "avoiding responsability". It is, in fact, living up to the very responsabilities that come with free speech, I don't like what she did, I don't like what she said, but I'm willing to protect it as much as I want my own words to be. If you're not it's your right, but don't pretend you care about free speech.