Lori Drew Cyberbullying Case Dismissed

Trepidity writes "About seven weeks after the judge tentatively overturned Lori Drew's guilty verdict for 'cyberbullying' following her online harassment of a teenager that was linked to the teenager's suicide, the case was finally officially dismissed. In a 32-page opinion (PDF), the court avoided a minefield of possible follow-on effects that civil-liberties groups had warned of by holding that merely violating a website's Terms of Service cannot constitute 'unauthorized access' for the purposes of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. 1030)."

Comments

Re:Fighting Abuse of Power

[Runaway1956]

You still attempt to psychoanalyze me. You pick out key phrases which you seem to view as "justifying" the predator.

And, you're wrong.

Please, quote one instance in which I say that the predator is justified, or that the prey "deserves" their treatment.

I have merely stated that I lack sympathy for the suicidal. I place them a little further up the food chain from the suicidal fools who decide to kill someone else on their way out - but they still dangle near the bottom of the food chain.

And, please. Comparing a suicide to a race or a religious group? Duhhh. Suicide doesn't equate to genocide, no matter how imaginative you are.

Re:Unfortunate neccesity

[einhverfr]

I would note that by the government's standards, Megan Meier was a hardened criminal, guilty of vast numbers of CFAA violations including violations of the MySpace terms of service (which say no under-14 yo's allowed). Probably guilty of using Google despite the fact that its ToS says one must be of the age of majority.

Heck, if Lori Drew, Ashley Grills, etc. hadn't driven her to suicide, I bet that prosecutor could have gotten her locked up for life.