Is lying about one’s identity on the Internet now a crime?
The verdict Wednesday in the MySpace cyberbullying case raised a variety of questions about the terms that users agree to when they log on to Web sites.
The defendant in the case, a Missouri woman, was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles on three misdemeanor counts of computer fraud for having misrepresented herself on the popular social network MySpace. The woman, Lori Drew, posed as a teenage boy in using the account to send first friendly and then menacing messages to Megan Meier, 13, who killed herself shortly after receiving a message in October 2006 that said in part, “The world would be a better place without you.”
MySpace’s terms of service require users to submit “truthful and accurate” registration information. Ms. Drew’s creation of a phony profile amounted to “unauthorized access” to the site, prosecutors said, a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which until now has been used almost exclusively to prosecute hacker crimes.
[blockquote]“There are lots of kids hurting badly online,†she said. “And guess what? They’re hurting badly offline, too. Because it’s more visible online, people are blaming technology rather than trying to solve the underlying problems of the kids that are hurting.â€[/blockquote]
She was “hurting”? That was her “underlying problem”? Not that she lived down the street from a cunning murderess?
This woman is going to have to live with that girl’s death on her conscience for the rest of her life. I hope she can live with herself.