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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)."
Well, no; there is no such thing as "simply speech." There are plenty of things that you can write on the internet or issue from your mouth that should rightfully result in you being imprisoned. Such as shouting fire in a crowded theatre.
Or:
1. purposefully playing with the emotions of one specific child (not general rants on the internet)
2. a child she knows to have psychologically problems
3. over an extended period of time
4. directly suggesting suicide after manipulating, setting up, and torturing this child
That's not "simply speech". not REMOTELY "simply speech". This is nothing like me calling Rob Malda a douchebag or advocating for greater acceptance of necrophilia or defending the Baptist church or anything else that someone might object to but is obviously free speech. there are lots of free speech that are odious but not criminal.
This does not consider how complicated the interplay between your rights and your responsibilities are in this world. No, you do not get automatic protection from the consequences of EVERYTHING you can possibly say
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
She can sue the gov't... if she get's permission from congress. For some reason, I don't think anyone will be very compassionate about her "mental distress" considering the reason she was put through all of this was by causing "mental distress" of another and subsequent suicide of that individual...
The right thing for Drew to do in this case is to sue the government and, specifically, the lead prosecuting attorney. Drew should sue them for mental distress and seek a multi-million dollar award.
This is true. I want the USA to be seen as the country which lets a murderer(*) go free then allows her to sue the government and win millions.
(*) The US has this quasi-religious fallacy that the mind is somehow less a biological entity than the body, so while we are limited by physical disability/limitation/programming, mental disability/limitation/programming somehow doesn't exist because it runs contrary to the philosophy about man running as a free rational entity. On the contrary, the mind is just another biological function, and driving someone to suicide (i.e. by manipulating their mind until they think of death as the only way out) is as much murdering them as pushing them onto a sword.
I am sure that eventually the horrible wrong she committed will be balanced - Karma has a way of working things out !
No it doesn't. Unfortunately, as much as I would like to say that there is something to that, karma is total bullshit. I mean, Hitler committed suicide before we could get to him -- how's that for karma? Or the evil, scumfuck businessmen who defraud the world of billions of dollars only to die of natural causes after getting fat, rich, and happy at the expense of the world? I wish there were something to be said for karma, but alas, it seems that ordinary means of revenge and retribution are all we have. As for Lori Drew, she will be punished by those around her for the rest of her life -- everyone knows who she is and what she has done and she will be an outcast forever. There's nothing mystical about that.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
This was truly an unfortunate necessity for the best interest of civil liberties. The reasoning that this case was presented would have made criminals of a great many people for things that should not be criminalized. I understand the charges would have essentially criminalized breaking TOS for a web site, something that simply should not be a criminal action. Will used against this evil bitch who does richly deserve prison, it would set a bad legal precedent.
That being said, I would still like to find a way to charge her with something appropriate, such as a lesser murder charge, as well as holding her civilly responsible (such as how oj still got held civilly) responsible for the murders he committed)
Missouri has made harassing a minor a felony, http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_16-2009_08_22.shtml#1250896617
So what I figure is, they knew that the current charges would most likely not stick so they crafted a law to handle the situation. The new law is worse that than even the laws they attempted to prosecute Lori Drew under the first time. They are just too open to interpretation.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So an adult posting as a child having intimate and/or sexual conversations with a child in order to later manipulate and ridicule them is merely "being mean"? If Lori Drew were a man, she'd be thrown away in prison for life for for being a sexual predator engaging in sexual conversations with a twelve year old girl online.
Her actions and intentions (and the results) could reasonably (in spirit, though certainly not law) be seen as manslaughter. Adults have measures they can take, legally, to retaliate against harassment and various forms of emotional and verbal abuse, but if you're a twelve year old little girl you should "just toughen the fuck up"?
The problem here is that this woman is a petty, vile, remorseless cunt (an applicable use of that word in this case which nobody can deny) that did a despicable thing that absolutely contributed significantly to the death of a child. Because the case was so mishandled (there are already laws which should have allowed certain prosecution without the ridiculous liberty-curtailing precedents involved here), the only way to make sure she gets what she deserves is to put the civil liberties of every person in the country in peril.
There is no great outcome either way in this case.
The government chose to use the legal system to make her life a living hell.
The right thing for Drew to do in this case is to sue the government and, specifically, the lead prosecuting attorney. Drew should sue them for mental distress and seek a multi-million dollar award.
Oh, poor, poor lady. Maybe she should hang herself. After all, she's shown *so* much remorse (*eyeroll*) for her actions.
If there was ever a case of harassment that justified some sort of prosecution, it's this one. For fuck's sake, the woman is -- at the very least -- a sexual predator. Posing as an underage boy to have sexual conversations with a twelve year old girl? What the fuck?! Not to mention adding on the intent to cause serious detriment by the machinations of her contrived plot to the girl.
She deserves everything she gets coming to her in a negative fashion. She and her family haven't even shown the slightest bit of remorse over what they did. Fuck them.
The only distressing thing here is that in order for her to get what she deserves, the liberties of everybody in this country have to be put in jeopardy. So to avoid setting such precedents, we have to smile and nod and say "sure, she clearly contributed to this girl killing herself, but she gets to continue being a free useless member of society pursuing her own happiness, because prosecutors couldn't come up with something more applicable than TOS violations.
All outcomes in this are miserable, in some way. Even the right one, which it seems won-out.
People who go around saying that a twelve year old girl should just "toughen up" really piss me off. Even if her attackers and harassers were her own age, it could be brutal and destructive, but in this case the harassers included a group of adults conspiring against her to cause her harm. That has to count for something. It's bullshit to say that a child should just "toughen up" against the orchestrated attacks and manipulations of full grown fucking adults.
If you're a balanced normal adult, you should be able to take a lot of crap and let it roll off your back. But there would certainly be legal consequences if, say, your spouse had serious mental and emotional problems that they were being treat\ed for and you went out of your way to orchestrate their mental torture and abuse and took advantage of their unbalanced state (hell, in many places, you can't take advantage of someone simply in a drunk state and there are protections for consumers who make large purchases and think otherwise within 72 hours!).
And yet... when it comes to a twelve year old girl... she's somehow supposed to be a solid fucking stoic rock. Not only against other children, but fucking adults three or four times her age. Lori Drew reminds me of that movie where the guys pretend to like that girl, but really it's all a game they're playing to make her feel loved and wanted and then they all drop her like a rock on the same day to see if they can collectively drive her to suicide. Except the guy who did that here wasn't a 17 year old boy but a 30-something year old woman and her family.
I'm not saying that we should put in peril every American's rights here just to prosecute this one insignificant twat. I guess considering what the prosecutors were trying her on, the judge did the only right thing that could be done. But that doesn't make the outcome any more pleasant. Justice for all had to trump over justice for one dead kid. And even though it was probably right... it still fucking sucks.
This implies that if an unstable individual listens to music that drives him/her to suicide, then the person(s) that performed and/or wrote the music is guilty of murder.
Are the performers and writers playing this music intentionally over a period of time in such a way ostensibly as to harass this individual? Is it planned meticulously to cause distress? As interrogators might play loud music for hours every day to break your "unstable" mind while they also aim bright lights at you and threaten you or your family, say? If so, yes, the involved performers/writers are murderers.
If you mean that just listening to this song (e.g. once on the radio) drove the individual to killing himself, then you'll need to provide some evidence that the person's decision to commit suicide came about in a significant way from listening to the song. Do you have one example of this, anywhere? There are many examples in psych and popular literature of people killing themselves after being exposed to a concerted bullying campaign, you see, but I'm yet to find anyone written up who had no intention of suicide before listening to a song, but killed himself right after.
And no points for the Gloomy Sunday urban legend, sorry.
First, Judge Wu's decision has nothing to do with whether Drew's actions constituted "cyberbullying" or whether she deserved to be prosecuted for her ill-treatment of Megan. All of that was decided long ago, first in Missouri, where the AG said Drew had violated no existing statute, nor in the Federal prosecution where the jury refused to treat Drew's actions as felonious.
What was left to determine was whether Drew's act of creating a fictitious identity at MySpace, in contravention of its Terms of Service, constituted a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). When Congress passed this law its intent was to criminalize activities like hacking into computers at banks or military contractors. After public outcry at the fact Drew was not convicted of anything for her actions, Justice Department attorneys in California (where the MySpace computers were housed) prosecuted Drew for violating the CFAA.
Judge Wu's decision is extremely cautious and proscribed in many ways. First, he specifically states that an "intentional" breach of a website's Terms of Service may come under the purview of the CFAA:
What's really at issue is whether someone can be prosecuted for violating the TOS, or whether MySpace's specific TOS were too vague to provide reasonable grounds for criminal prosecution. "Vagueness" in this case means whether "individuals of 'common intelligence' are on notice that a breach of the terms of service contract can become a crime under the CFAA." His ruling rejects the Justice Department's case on the grounds that the MySpace TOS are simply too vague to provide a basis for prosecution. In particular, he ruled that the TOS were so expansive that a wide variety of behaviors would become criminalized (lying about one's age or weight, for instance):
My guess is that attorneys for popular websites, particularly social networking sites, will be revising their TOS to comply with Wu's decision.
A shrink speaks.
I'm not a shrink; I'm a mathematician, if you care to know. But you seem to have issues with shrinks, looking at all your posts in this thread. Why?
Where did I justify anyone abusing anyone else?
"I have near zero sympathy for kids who are such losers that they can't face life's challenges [abuse?]. Not quite zero, but near it. This girl who committed suicide because some boy she had never met apparently turned on her isn't very far up the food chain from [murderers] the idiots who choose to "go out in a blaze of glory" while shooting up their school. She was weak and unstable, and she chose to suicide. Her lack of a support group contributed, yes, but the fact remains, she failed."
Your rhetoric is an exemplar for how to de-humanise someone as a precursor to justification for maltreatment. They're only retards, they're only Catholics, they're only gypsies, they're only Jews, they're only weak. Each post you make here lifts more of the mask over the anger you're feeling in relation to your abuse.
This doesn't change the fact that the weak succumb, and the strong fight.
But those consequences aren't mutually exclusive, are they? The strong fight, yet sometimes they succumb too. You'd succumb to a sufficiently mentally and/or physically stronger oppressor. So would I. So would anyone. Fortunately, neither you nor I have encountered such a person yet. But if you did, I wouldn't dismiss you after your death as a sub-human weakling. Would you do the same to me?
No, not jail. But you should probably go back to Philosophy 101: Intro to Logic for using such a bad analogy.
Certain portions of any society's population are more easily victimized (and more vulnerable to predation or exploitation) than others. Our legal system takes that into account, as it should, and offers those groups greater protection. That is why an adult can be prosecuted if they allow an infant to drown in a bathtub, but not if instead it had been a non-physically-or-mentally-handicapped adult that drowned. It's also why it's considered a greater crime to murder someone with a handicap, a child, or a senior citizen.
The fact of the matter is, many mental disabilities make the sufferer more susceptible to suggestion or external influence. The victim in this case was an adolescent girl suffering from clinical depression. In fact, she was even on multiple mood-stabilizers. It should be quite obvious that someone in that situation is already predisposed to self-harm and suicide without others bullying them. But when someone deliberately causes psychological harm on such an individual, the situation becomes even more dangerous. In this case, it was a grown woman preying on the psychological vulnerability of a 13-year-old child, and the results proved fatal.
If I approached a man standing on the ledge of a cliff and intentionally frightened them, and as a result they lost their balance and fell to their death, I would certainly be held accountable (and charged with involuntary manslaughter). If a suicidal person is standing on a ledge on a tall building, and I tell them to jump&mdashand they do, should I not be held accountable as well? Now, in this case, the woman had to make much more of an effort to get this girl to commit suicide. I'm certain she had no intent to kill, but she is still potentially liable for involuntary manslaughter or at least criminal negligence (though not likely as this is a clear case of malicious intent).
It's the stupid prosecutor's fault, there were plenty of more viable angles that wouldn't endanger everyone's rights, they just wanted to use this one to fluff up their careers. For example, suicide is a crime (odd but true) and she contributed to a minor's decision to commit that crime. Therefor she should be tried for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She deliberately inflicted an emotional damage on a child, so assault. She is a mother who has demonstrated that she doesn't have sufficient emotional maturity to behave responsibly. Perhaps social services should look in to that.
But NO, the prosecutors were determined to grab some headlines and make it a "cybercrime" for their own benefit and so she goes free.