If you're going to transfer files over UDP then you need to build some TCP-like protocol on top of it.
Well, no, you don't. You need an application level protocol, which only needs to be "TCP-like" if you are building a connection-oriented application. This might make sense for the client-tracker portion of a bittorent-like setup, but for the main file transfer I don't see why you'd need something much like TCP at all.
I'm not trying to defend Lori Drew's actions or character, but, the way you put it, it seems to me that the appropriate punishment would be to ban her from using that computer service again.
If someone trespasses on private real property to stalk someone, harasses them, and drives them to suicide, we wouldn't just ban them from that particular bit of real property. Certainly, the owner of the real property would be within their rights to do so, but no one would argue that criminal charges weren't appropriate as well.
Why should the internet be especially lawless in this respect?
Can I be charged with using a computer system without authorization for downloading copyrighted materials How about exceeding a bandwidth limit?
If to TOS specifically prohibit that, possibly, even without this verdict. Though under this law, the violation has to be knowing, so unless there is clear evidence that you knew the material was under copyright or that you were exceeding the bandwidth limit, it would be pretty hard. (Drew clearly knew she was using a false name, knew she was soliciting personal information from a minor, and knew she was harassing another person.)
So long as someone gets put in jail, it doesn't matter that registering with a website under a net name is made a criminal offence along the way.
Except that nothing in this case does that. Its only a criminal offense if the authorization you are given from the owner of the website to use their service prohibits that.
If you give someone conditional permission to use your property, they can't use it inconsistently with that conditional permission. Its true if its your house or their car. That it is a computer system accessed over the internet doesn't change that.
"No, but fraud and harassment are." As I said before...trouble is, she wasn't convicted of this really. She was convicted of basically breaking the myspace EULA. She wasn't convicted of harassment...
Actually, she was found guilty of breaking the terms of service in ways which amount to fraud (count 1) and harassment (count 3).
Count 1 was breaking the terms of service by using a false name where a real name was required; i.e., gaining access to other's resources under false pretenses, what is, in common language, fraud.
Count 2 was breaking the terms of service by using the service to solicit personal information from a minor.
Count 3 was breaking the terms of service by using the service to harass or harm another person. E.g., harassment.
Yes, she was convicted for accessing the system without authorization--in what should be a tort at best, not a criminal act.
Do you mean that accessing a computer system without authorization should never be criminal, or that the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act should be narrowed so that none of the three particular ways in which she was found to have accessed the system without authorization should actually be criminal? And, if the latter, exactly how do you see it being narrowed?
"accessing a computer without authorization", where the term means "using a pseudonym"
No, that's not what the term meant in this case, in any of the three counts.
In one of the three counts, using false information where the terms of service under which authorization was granted required true information was a factor. In the other two, using a pseudonym wasn't even relevant.
Anonymity is a necessary part of freedom.
Sure, but theft isn't. Nothing in this ruling would be applicable to people anonymously using their own resources, or anonymously using other people's resources when the terms under which they are offered access to those resources do not preclude anonymity. You seem to think it is essential to freedom that people be prohibited from conditioning other people's use of their property on providing a true identity, which seems to me to be an utterly ludicrous position.
As someone else said, when you are restricting freedoms you don't arrest the white 30 year old mother of three, you go after the scary mexican guy first to set a precident.
Lori Drew is a middle aged white mother, not a scary mexican guy.
Certainly Drew deserved punishment, but if everybody using the internet was punished for causing emotional distress over the internet, we'd all be in jail. Keep in mind that that is all she did.
No, that's not "all she did". What she was found guilty of was using a computer system without authorization by: 1) Using a fake name when the terms required a real name, 2) Using the service to solicit personal information from a minor contrary to the terms of service. 3) Using the service to harass another user contrary to the terms of service.
While the emotional harm that resulted is a big factor in why she was charged, the fact that that resulted from her acts is not what she was charged with. She was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in a way which is essentially theft of service, since the "payment" for using MySpace is, essentially, your use of MySpace in a way which makes it a non-hostile social network, since the profitability of a social networking site is driven by its attractiveness as a network.
I think a public beating would be more appropriate and cheaper to society as a whole.
I don't think arbitrary physical retribution based on how you feel about an act is better than the rule of law and enforcement of laws on the books to punish wrongdoers.
But computer crimes? Seriously, what the fuck?
Your arguments is vigilante beatings, good, charging people with crimes that are directly applicable to their harmful acts, bad. Is that it?
When was the last time anyone sat on a jury and the judge said "hey, if you think its a harmless violation, don't convict".
Consideration of harm comes both before the jury consideration of the verdict is an issue (in consideration of whether to prosecute and, where multiple charges are available, which charges to pursue) and after (in sentencing). You are correct that its not a factor juries are asked to consider when rendering a verdict (except when the harm is an element of the violation), but you are incorrect to treat that as at all relevant to my post. I suggest you reread the last, oh, two-thirds or so of the post, rather than responding to five words taken out of context:
Not everyone who is convicted of the same offense is, or should be, given the same sentence. There is a reason that our system has maximum sentences or sentencing ranges, not precise sentences for each crime. One thing that is often taken into account in where in the range of potential sentences a particular offenders sentence should fall is how severe the harms done by the act were, compared to those that are inherent in the crime that they were convicted of. Also often considered is how bad the act was itself within the range of the acts that would violate the provision of law at issue. These are also often considered before sentencing, or even charging, from the prosecutor in deciding which things that might be violations of the law even deserve to be charged at all, and which, even when they come to light, aren't worth the expenditure of public resources involved in a prosecution.
So, no, even if your friend were technically guilty of a lesser and harmless violation of the same law that Drew was found guilty of violating in three counts, it would not logically follow that she must deserve the same punishment as the maximum to which Drew might be sentenced.
If she was guilty of psychological stalking (which she was) she should have been charged with stalking.
The charges she was found guilty of were using a computer system without authorization by:
1. violating the terms of service by providing false identification where the ToS required true identification, 2. violating the terms of service by using the service soliciting personal information from a minor, which was expressly prohibited by the ToS. 3. violating the terms of service by using the service to harassing another person, which was expressly prohibited by the ToS.
Now, 2 & 3 refer to the acts which might be described as "psychological stalking" directly, and #1 refers to an act which was a ruse used to advance the "psychological stalking" effectuated through #2 and #3. So, AFAICT, what she was charged with, and found guilty of by a jury, is exactly what you are arguing she should have been charged with.
This is a clear misapplication of the law.
It seems to me that it can only be argued to be a misapplication of the law if her use of MySpace was, contrary to the prosecutors contention and the jury verdict, authorized. So, how do you make that case?
However in this case it WAS a crime to have the pseudonym, too (and that was the first misdemeanor conviction count).
It was not a crime to have a pseudonym. It was a crime to use it in place of a real name to access a system to which the owner made a public offer of access conditioned on the use of a true name.
Apparently not since that's not what Lori was charged with.
Actually, the intentional manipulation of a child was part of a crime she was charged with and found not guilty of (violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with the intent of inflicting emotional distress), and, I believe, part of a crime she was charged with and on which a mistrial was reached (the conspiracy charge), and part of the crime she was found guilty of (since among the bases for the three counts of violating the Terms of Service were that she used MySpace, in violation of the terms of service, to extract personal information from a minor and that she used it to harass another person, not just the misrepresentation parts), so I think it is completely untrue to say it is not what she was charged with.
So, she's just committed the same act as the defendant in this case.
Did she violate the terms of service by soliciting personal information from a minor?
Did she violate the terms of service by using MySpace to harass someone?
If you answered "no" to either of these questions, she did not, in fact, commit the same acts for which Drew as found guilty by the jury in this case.
So technically, she should get 3 years in jail and a fine.
Drew has not been sentenced. She might be sentenced to less than the maximum for the three counts she was convicted of. Not everyone who is convicted of the same offense is, or should be, given the same sentence. There is a reason that our system has maximum sentences or sentencing ranges, not precise sentences for each crime. One thing that is often taken into account in where in the range of potential sentences a particular offenders sentence should fall is how severe the harms done by the act were, compared to those that are inherent in the crime that they were convicted of. Also often considered is how bad the act was itself within the range of the acts that would violate the provision of law at issue. These are also often considered before sentencing, or even charging, from the prosecutor in deciding which things that might be violations of the law even deserve to be charged at all, and which, even when they come to light, aren't worth the expenditure of public resources involved in a prosecution.
So, no, even if your friend were technically guilty of a lesser and harmless violation of the same law that Drew was found guilty of violating in three counts, it would not logically follow that she must deserve the same punishment as the maximum to which Drew might be sentenced.
I brought up anarchy because it's what punishing this person implies.
No, punishing this person under the existing law that she was found guilty of violating does not imply anarchy. It is quite consistent with the rule of law.
Not prosecuting her for violating that law because, even though she did great harm by violating the law, the law which exist does not express what we are really angry at her for would be contrary to the concept of the rule of law.
What's unreasonable is deciding that this person must be punished even though her action was not against the law.
Except that her action was against the law, which is why she was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of violating the law.
By all means, advocate that the law should be changed. But if you believe in the rule of law at all, this person should be set free!
Why? She accessed a computer system, deliberately and knowingly in violation of the conditional authorization she had to access that system, and in doing so violated the law. Now, I might be swayed by the argument that despite the clear violation of the law, prosecutorial discretion ought to be granted and she ought not to be prosecuted if the violation was harmless, and there were reason to believe that she was not at risk of reviolating in a way that was harmful. But this violation was not harmless.
As for the definition of "murder", you can quibble over the English definition but clearly what she did is not covered by the legal definition, otherwise the prosecutors would have charged her with it.
Prosecutors might not charge someone who they believe is guilty of a crime because they think that a particular element of the offense, while it occurred, might be difficult to prove. Al Capone was not charged only with tax evasion because that's all prosecutors thought he was guilty of.
Suppose some ambitious prosecutor has decided that you must have committed a Federal crime by using a pseudonym to have a nasty war of words with someone on a chat forum on a politically touchy subject, in violation of the Terms of Service?
Its fairly easy to prevent this by not registering under a pseudonym on a site whose Terms of Service prohibit such registrations.
(And, to extend the analogy to the Drew case, by not deliberately soliciting personal information from someone know to you to be a minor on a site whose terms of service prohibit that, and by not using a site whose terms of service prohibit harassing other users to harass other users.)
He can use this terrible precedent to railroad you on charges of "unauthorised access", claiming it has nothing to do with, say, opposing abortion on demand, or supporting it, or whatever.
Yes, any law can be used by an "overzealous prosecutor" selectively to prosecute people for reasons unrelated to the law, especially if they actively violate the law. That this is abstractly possible is not an argument against the law (since it is true of every law), its an argument that prosecutorial misconduct ought to be policed.
If you don't think this can happen, well, it *has* happened, over and over, with other laws meant for originally limited purposes. The anti-Mafia RICO laws come to mind.
RICO was never intended to have "limited purposes", it was by design very broad ab initio.
There is indeed a slippery slope here, and a steep one at that.
I'll believe that when you point to some particular risk with this law that is not present in any law.
Prosecuting what can only be called a venomous viper isn't worth it for what it'll cost all of us.
Not prosecuting a venomous viper who has struck when you have a perfectly good, clearly applicable law would cost all of us more, since it would demonstrate that the law can be flaunted, even to the point of causing death, with no consequence, and breed contempt for the law.
I'd hope you would not like to have a precedent of this type of conviction that could be used against someone doing something as innocuous as joining a website under a false name....
She wasn't convicted of "joining a website under a false name".
She was convicted of accessing a computer system without authorization.
One of the reasons for that is that she gave false information when the authorization she was offered to use the system was conditioned on providing true information. Note that many websites allow users to register pseudonymously, and that's the choice of the owner of the website, and those wouldn't be affeted by this, since registering at one of them under a false name wouldn't make your use "without authorization".
But this wasn't the only reason she was convicted of using the system without authorization. There was also the fact that that authorization excluded use the system to solicit personal information from minors, an exclusion which she violated. And the fact that that authorization excluded use of the system to harrass or harm others, another exclusion she violated.
Remember the only reason they went after under these statues is...they could not find any law applicable to what she did.
Actually, no. If they couldn't find any law applicable to what she did...they wouldn't have charged her. She was charged under this law for two reasons: one, its the only federal law that was applicable to what she did, and federal prosecutors (and others) were frustrated that state prosecutors did not prosecute her under state law. Whether or not there were any existing state laws that would be applicable was disputed at the time, but its not really all that important.
Stretching laws to try to get someone bad, that did not break a law, is VERY dangerous.
Using someone else's resources in violation of the only permissions which give you any right to use those resources is against the law, and has been for quite some time. Its not a stretch, and its not new. In the specific case of computer systems, one of the laws that it is against is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act under which these convictions were handed down.
Should we make this skank mother pay for what she did to Megan? No. She didn't break any laws, so let's not create new ones just for this waste of life.
Uh, yeah, she did break the computer fraud and abuse act, which is a law. Its not a new law created for her acts (if it was, she couldn't be prosecuted under it, since it would be an ex post facto law, and the Constitution prohibits those.) Its the first time someone has been charged under it in these particular circumstances, but if you define the circumstances narrowly enough, that's true of every prosecution under every law. The law's been on the books for years.
What if it were a real teenaged boy who used his real name and information and he harassed the girl and drove her to suicide? To me, the falsification of information seems irrelevant.
What she was convicted of is three counts of accessing the computer system in violation of the terms of service. This was because, as I understand the articles about the case (I'm not sure that the these provisions line up with the counts, but these are the three provisions I've seen referred to that she violated): 1. She provided false information, where the terms of service required true information. 2. She used the service to solicit personal information from a minor, which the terms of service prohibited. 3. She used the service to harrass or harm another person, which the terms of service prohibited.
So, if everything had been the same except that she was actually who she pretended to be, she would still have been violating the last term, and possibly the second (depending on whether the ToS prohibit that generally or only prohibit adults from soliciting minors personal information), and would still seem to be liable to prosecution under the act.
Am I the only one who cannot understand why they went this stupid direction rather than processing using a relevent law.
This is a relevant law.
To me this seems just as bad as when some companyt slaps "on the internet" onto some existing thing and try to patent it/otherwise claim control over it.
If this was a physical site, violating the license which allowed one to be premise for the purpose of harming another would be civil, and potentially criminal, trespass. On the internet, and you are violating a different law which is, due to the nature of the internet, a federal law. I don't see what the problem is.
Surely mental torture is covered by an existing law.
"Torture", in law, has a very narrow definition which does not apply here. Intentional infliction of emotional distress is generally not a crime, its a tort (a civil cause of action). Anyhow, she was charged with violating the computer fraud and abuse act with the unlawful intent to do that, which is a more severe crime than the run of the mill computer fraud and abuse act violations she was convicted of, but not convicted of that (its actually pretty hard to prove intended mental harm, and unlike with physical harm, you don't have clear instrumentalities that any jury is going to see as clearly signalling that intent -- there isn't a mental equivalent of a gun or knife.)
However, using accessing a computer network in violation of the only permissions which give you a right to use it is covered by existing law whether or not you are doing it to inflict some kind of mental cruelty, and that's what she is convicted of. Sure, perhaps it seems odd that we have so many different specific laws for "using someone else's stuff without permission" where that "stuff" happens to be real estate (trespass to land), conventional personal property (trespass to chattels, theft, conversion, etc.), computer systems (computer fraud and abuse act), etc. But they are all, including the one used here, "existing" laws.
Adds reader gillbates: "She now faces up to 3 years in jail and $300,000 in fines -- a troubling precedent for anyone who has ever registered with a website under a pseudonym."
Gillbates is just scaremongering.
She wasn't convicted of "registering for a website under a pseudonym", she was convicted for accessing the system without authorization (that is, in violation of the terms which gave her the right to use the system) by providing false information, and for using the service to solicit personal information from a minor and to harras or harm other people, all of which are expressly forbidden by the terms of service.
People who register under pseudonyms on sites that do not expressly prohibit such registrations have nothing to fear here.
I never said GM tried to sell them. I said that it showed they could not be sold at a profit. You do not need to actually sell a product to do this.
Actually, in order to show that it cannot be done (in a particular environment), you would need to attempt every reasonable method of doing so. Otherwise, you would just show that the particular strategies you tried were unsuccessful.
GM did not try any strategies of selling them, and so did not show they could not be sold at a profit. They grudgingly made them available for lease, did everything they could to prevent them from being popular, and withdrew them from the market as soon as they were able to.
They didn't "show" anything about selling electric vehicles, since they never even tried to do that.
As for the rest, if the electric vehicle concept was ready to make money for anyone who decided to make one in 1998, why didn't any other car companies do it?
If you want to make the "well, no one did it, so it must not have been a good idea" argument, knock yourself out, but that's a completely different (and utterly fallacious on its face) argument from the "GM showed that it can't be done" argument.
Re:No its worse than that
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Evolving Rocks
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· Score: 1
The modern use of evolution to describe the biological process of descent with modification is in fact a rather poor use of language.
Its not poor use of language. Its rather precise specialized jargon of a particular specialized domain (biological sciences, roughly: while the concept has some application outside biologiy, its usually not described simply as "evolution" there, but as, e.g., "generalized Darwinian evolution" or something similar which makes it clear that we aren't just talking about any gradual change over time but a close analog of the specialized biological meaning of "evolution".)
Have all the residents of a city do it...
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Houses With Tails
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· Score: 1
...and you've re-invented the concept of a municipal utility.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, no, you don't. You need an application level protocol, which only needs to be "TCP-like" if you are building a connection-oriented application. This might make sense for the client-tracker portion of a bittorent-like setup, but for the main file transfer I don't see why you'd need something much like TCP at all.
If someone trespasses on private real property to stalk someone, harasses them, and drives them to suicide, we wouldn't just ban them from that particular bit of real property. Certainly, the owner of the real property would be within their rights to do so, but no one would argue that criminal charges weren't appropriate as well.
Why should the internet be especially lawless in this respect?
If to TOS specifically prohibit that, possibly, even without this verdict. Though under this law, the violation has to be knowing, so unless there is clear evidence that you knew the material was under copyright or that you were exceeding the bandwidth limit, it would be pretty hard. (Drew clearly knew she was using a false name, knew she was soliciting personal information from a minor, and knew she was harassing another person.)
IIRC, "harassment" laws, that exist, are usually civil, and "anti-stalking" laws usually require some element of physical stalking.
Except that nothing in this case does that. Its only a criminal offense if the authorization you are given from the owner of the website to use their service prohibits that.
If you give someone conditional permission to use your property, they can't use it inconsistently with that conditional permission. Its true if its your house or their car. That it is a computer system accessed over the internet doesn't change that.
Actually, she was found guilty of breaking the terms of service in ways which amount to fraud (count 1) and harassment (count 3).
Count 1 was breaking the terms of service by using a false name where a real name was required; i.e., gaining access to other's resources under false pretenses, what is, in common language, fraud.
Count 2 was breaking the terms of service by using the service to solicit personal information from a minor.
Count 3 was breaking the terms of service by using the service to harass or harm another person. E.g., harassment.
Do you mean that accessing a computer system without authorization should never be criminal, or that the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act should be narrowed so that none of the three particular ways in which she was found to have accessed the system without authorization should actually be criminal? And, if the latter, exactly how do you see it being narrowed?
No, that's not what the term meant in this case, in any of the three counts.
In one of the three counts, using false information where the terms of service under which authorization was granted required true information was a factor. In the other two, using a pseudonym wasn't even relevant.
Sure, but theft isn't. Nothing in this ruling would be applicable to people anonymously using their own resources, or anonymously using other people's resources when the terms under which they are offered access to those resources do not preclude anonymity. You seem to think it is essential to freedom that people be prohibited from conditioning other people's use of their property on providing a true identity, which seems to me to be an utterly ludicrous position.
Lori Drew is a middle aged white mother, not a scary mexican guy.
No, that's not "all she did". What she was found guilty of was using a computer system without authorization by:
1) Using a fake name when the terms required a real name,
2) Using the service to solicit personal information from a minor contrary to the terms of service.
3) Using the service to harass another user contrary to the terms of service.
While the emotional harm that resulted is a big factor in why she was charged, the fact that that resulted from her acts is not what she was charged with. She was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in a way which is essentially theft of service, since the "payment" for using MySpace is, essentially, your use of MySpace in a way which makes it a non-hostile social network, since the profitability of a social networking site is driven by its attractiveness as a network.
I don't think arbitrary physical retribution based on how you feel about an act is better than the rule of law and enforcement of laws on the books to punish wrongdoers.
Your arguments is vigilante beatings, good, charging people with crimes that are directly applicable to their harmful acts, bad. Is that it?
Consideration of harm comes both before the jury consideration of the verdict is an issue (in consideration of whether to prosecute and, where multiple charges are available, which charges to pursue) and after (in sentencing). You are correct that its not a factor juries are asked to consider when rendering a verdict (except when the harm is an element of the violation), but you are incorrect to treat that as at all relevant to my post. I suggest you reread the last, oh, two-thirds or so of the post, rather than responding to five words taken out of context:
The charges she was found guilty of were using a computer system without authorization by:
1. violating the terms of service by providing false identification where the ToS required true identification,
2. violating the terms of service by using the service soliciting personal information from a minor, which was expressly prohibited by the ToS.
3. violating the terms of service by using the service to harassing another person, which was expressly prohibited by the ToS.
Now, 2 & 3 refer to the acts which might be described as "psychological stalking" directly, and #1 refers to an act which was a ruse used to advance the "psychological stalking" effectuated through #2 and #3. So, AFAICT, what she was charged with, and found guilty of by a jury, is exactly what you are arguing she should have been charged with.
It seems to me that it can only be argued to be a misapplication of the law if her use of MySpace was, contrary to the prosecutors contention and the jury verdict, authorized. So, how do you make that case?
It was not a crime to have a pseudonym. It was a crime to use it in place of a real name to access a system to which the owner made a public offer of access conditioned on the use of a true name.
Actually, the intentional manipulation of a child was part of a crime she was charged with and found not guilty of (violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with the intent of inflicting emotional distress), and, I believe, part of a crime she was charged with and on which a mistrial was reached (the conspiracy charge), and part of the crime she was found guilty of (since among the bases for the three counts of violating the Terms of Service were that she used MySpace, in violation of the terms of service, to extract personal information from a minor and that she used it to harass another person, not just the misrepresentation parts), so I think it is completely untrue to say it is not what she was charged with.
Did she violate the terms of service by soliciting personal information from a minor?
Did she violate the terms of service by using MySpace to harass someone?
If you answered "no" to either of these questions, she did not, in fact, commit the same acts for which Drew as found guilty by the jury in this case.
Drew has not been sentenced. She might be sentenced to less than the maximum for the three counts she was convicted of. Not everyone who is convicted of the same offense is, or should be, given the same sentence. There is a reason that our system has maximum sentences or sentencing ranges, not precise sentences for each crime. One thing that is often taken into account in where in the range of potential sentences a particular offenders sentence should fall is how severe the harms done by the act were, compared to those that are inherent in the crime that they were convicted of. Also often considered is how bad the act was itself within the range of the acts that would violate the provision of law at issue. These are also often considered before sentencing, or even charging, from the prosecutor in deciding which things that might be violations of the law even deserve to be charged at all, and which, even when they come to light, aren't worth the expenditure of public resources involved in a prosecution.
So, no, even if your friend were technically guilty of a lesser and harmless violation of the same law that Drew was found guilty of violating in three counts, it would not logically follow that she must deserve the same punishment as the maximum to which Drew might be sentenced.
No, punishing this person under the existing law that she was found guilty of violating does not imply anarchy. It is quite consistent with the rule of law.
Not prosecuting her for violating that law because, even though she did great harm by violating the law, the law which exist does not express what we are really angry at her for would be contrary to the concept of the rule of law.
Except that her action was against the law, which is why she was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of violating the law.
Why? She accessed a computer system, deliberately and knowingly in violation of the conditional authorization she had to access that system, and in doing so violated the law. Now, I might be swayed by the argument that despite the clear violation of the law, prosecutorial discretion ought to be granted and she ought not to be prosecuted if the violation was harmless, and there were reason to believe that she was not at risk of reviolating in a way that was harmful. But this violation was not harmless.
Prosecutors might not charge someone who they believe is guilty of a crime because they think that a particular element of the offense, while it occurred, might be difficult to prove. Al Capone was not charged only with tax evasion because that's all prosecutors thought he was guilty of.
Its fairly easy to prevent this by not registering under a pseudonym on a site whose Terms of Service prohibit such registrations.
(And, to extend the analogy to the Drew case, by not deliberately soliciting personal information from someone know to you to be a minor on a site whose terms of service prohibit that, and by not using a site whose terms of service prohibit harassing other users to harass other users.)
Yes, any law can be used by an "overzealous prosecutor" selectively to prosecute people for reasons unrelated to the law, especially if they actively violate the law. That this is abstractly possible is not an argument against the law (since it is true of every law), its an argument that prosecutorial misconduct ought to be policed.
RICO was never intended to have "limited purposes", it was by design very broad ab initio.
I'll believe that when you point to some particular risk with this law that is not present in any law.
Not prosecuting a venomous viper who has struck when you have a perfectly good, clearly applicable law would cost all of us more, since it would demonstrate that the law can be flaunted, even to the point of causing death, with no consequence, and breed contempt for the law.
She wasn't convicted of "joining a website under a false name".
She was convicted of accessing a computer system without authorization.
One of the reasons for that is that she gave false information when the authorization she was offered to use the system was conditioned on providing true information. Note that many websites allow users to register pseudonymously, and that's the choice of the owner of the website, and those wouldn't be affeted by this, since registering at one of them under a false name wouldn't make your use "without authorization".
But this wasn't the only reason she was convicted of using the system without authorization. There was also the fact that that authorization excluded use the system to solicit personal information from minors, an exclusion which she violated. And the fact that that authorization excluded use of the system to harrass or harm others, another exclusion she violated.
Actually, no. If they couldn't find any law applicable to what she did...they wouldn't have charged her. She was charged under this law for two reasons: one, its the only federal law that was applicable to what she did, and federal prosecutors (and others) were frustrated that state prosecutors did not prosecute her under state law. Whether or not there were any existing state laws that would be applicable was disputed at the time, but its not really all that important.
Uh, yeah, she did break the computer fraud and abuse act, which is a law. Its not a new law created for her acts (if it was, she couldn't be prosecuted under it, since it would be an ex post facto law, and the Constitution prohibits those.) Its the first time someone has been charged under it in these particular circumstances, but if you define the circumstances narrowly enough, that's true of every prosecution under every law. The law's been on the books for years.
What she was convicted of is three counts of accessing the computer system in violation of the terms of service. This was because, as I understand the articles about the case (I'm not sure that the these provisions line up with the counts, but these are the three provisions I've seen referred to that she violated):
1. She provided false information, where the terms of service required true information.
2. She used the service to solicit personal information from a minor, which the terms of service prohibited.
3. She used the service to harrass or harm another person, which the terms of service prohibited.
So, if everything had been the same except that she was actually who she pretended to be, she would still have been violating the last term, and possibly the second (depending on whether the ToS prohibit that generally or only prohibit adults from soliciting minors personal information), and would still seem to be liable to prosecution under the act.
This is a relevant law.
If this was a physical site, violating the license which allowed one to be premise for the purpose of harming another would be civil, and potentially criminal, trespass. On the internet, and you are violating a different law which is, due to the nature of the internet, a federal law. I don't see what the problem is.
"Torture", in law, has a very narrow definition which does not apply here. Intentional infliction of emotional distress is generally not a crime, its a tort (a civil cause of action). Anyhow, she was charged with violating the computer fraud and abuse act with the unlawful intent to do that, which is a more severe crime than the run of the mill computer fraud and abuse act violations she was convicted of, but not convicted of that (its actually pretty hard to prove intended mental harm, and unlike with physical harm, you don't have clear instrumentalities that any jury is going to see as clearly signalling that intent -- there isn't a mental equivalent of a gun or knife.)
However, using accessing a computer network in violation of the only permissions which give you a right to use it is covered by existing law whether or not you are doing it to inflict some kind of mental cruelty, and that's what she is convicted of. Sure, perhaps it seems odd that we have so many different specific laws for "using someone else's stuff without permission" where that "stuff" happens to be real estate (trespass to land), conventional personal property (trespass to chattels, theft, conversion, etc.), computer systems (computer fraud and abuse act), etc. But they are all, including the one used here, "existing" laws.
Actually, in order to show that it cannot be done (in a particular environment), you would need to attempt every reasonable method of doing so. Otherwise, you would just show that the particular strategies you tried were unsuccessful.
GM did not try any strategies of selling them, and so did not show they could not be sold at a profit. They grudgingly made them available for lease, did everything they could to prevent them from being popular, and withdrew them from the market as soon as they were able to.
They didn't "show" anything about selling electric vehicles, since they never even tried to do that.
If you want to make the "well, no one did it, so it must not have been a good idea" argument, knock yourself out, but that's a completely different (and utterly fallacious on its face) argument from the "GM showed that it can't be done" argument.
Its not poor use of language. Its rather precise specialized jargon of a particular specialized domain (biological sciences, roughly: while the concept has some application outside biologiy, its usually not described simply as "evolution" there, but as, e.g., "generalized Darwinian evolution" or something similar which makes it clear that we aren't just talking about any gradual change over time but a close analog of the specialized biological meaning of "evolution".)
...and you've re-invented the concept of a municipal utility.