MySpace Suicide Charges Threaten Free Speech 687
Naturalist recommends a piece up at Ars about a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the EFF, CDT, Public Citizen, and a group of 14 law professors in the case of Lori Drew, who posed as a teenage boy to harass another teen online, eventually driving her to suicide. (We've discussed the case a few times.) "[The amicus brief argues] that violating MySpace's Terms of Service agreement shouldn't be considered criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The groups believe that if the mother, Lori Drew, is prosecuted using CFAA charges, the case could have significant ramifications for the free speech rights of US citizens using the Internet."
Um, no. (Score:2, Informative)
A private individual or company (they) does not have to let one exercise one's free speach right. They do not have to let someone else use my system or website to expound ideas They do not agree with. And, They have the right to condition access to same on not expounding those ideas.
That is part of freedom of speach and freedom of association.
They also have the right to condition access on being truthful. By lying to obtain access, one exceeds one's access. It is obtaining access by fraud. It just happens that obtaining access by fraud is illegal.
Re:But it IS about the law... (Score:5, Informative)
There are plenty of laws that prohibit harassment. Here is an experiment you can try right in your own town/city. Go down town. Find some old lady walking down the road, and follow behind her calling out "fucking hag", "stupid bitch", "go die", as loud and as often as you find it within your power of free speech. No do this for most of the day, randomly switching out people (try to find the most pathetic persion you can, elderly, children, invalids, etc..) You'll quickly learn that there are plenty of laws that prohibit this type of behavior.
Besides, have you even bothered typing "harassment laws"?
legitimate criminal and civil charges could apply (Score:3, Informative)
criminal charges
Child Endangerment- The suicide of the girl was a reasonably forseeable consequence...at the very least its an issue for a jury.
Then use a charge of felony child endangerment as the basis for "felony murder" charges
on the basis of
State of Minnesota vs.Tasha Daphne Mitchell(2005)
Civil charges
intentional inflictional of emotional distress
wrongful death
Re:This isn't about free speech (Score:4, Informative)
Their argument is that by breaking MySpace's TOS she is gaining unauthorized access to the site (i.e., hacking it), and can be charged for that. If you don't see why this is a very bad thing, and can't be bothered to RTFA, I'll quote the relevant bits for you:
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:5, Informative)
What kind of behavior are you considering outlawing here? Being a dick? You want to outlaw being a dick on the internet?
I can't speak for OP, but the behaviour we might want to look at is not simply being a dick, but conducting a calculated and sustained campaign of harrassment intended, with malice. to inflict serious physical &/or psychological damage on a specific individual. We might even want to extend it to a class of individuals to account for 'behaviours' such as planting epilepsy inducing graphics on epilepsy support boards and the like.
I agree with OP, that twisting an existing law for fear that this woman might get away with what she has done, when clearly she should not, is not an acceptable solution.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:3, Informative)
Was she your first girlfriend? Or worse, have you had a dozen or so other girlfriends, but realized the day you met her that she was really special on a different level?
Chances are you've had girlfriends before, and you don't have a little harem now, so somewhere along the line you encountered bad relationships. Chances are also pretty good that you have something else worthwhile in your life, and don't feel like you've been totally abandoned and left with nothing. So this is probably pretty familiar to you, and you probably had some fallbacks growing up that amounted to "my girlfriend dumped me *cry cry*" like anything else that sucked.
This is a girl that, on minimal life experience, had her life fall apart on her. She probably would have cried a lot, dragged through it, had emotional support from friends/family eventually, and managed. Instead, she got emotional support from exactly one source, which then became the one thing that meters the value of her life; then that one thing got ripped away from her. No longer ready to deal with current problems on her own, and just had a whole new level of shit thrust at her.
Trust me, you haven't been there. You'd be dead.
Re:This isn't about free speech (Score:3, Informative)
How about Lori Drew take some personal responsibility for being evil, and kill herself to improve the gene pool. People with their 'personal responsibility' rants always want it on one side and not on the other. Completely irresponsible.
A Few Misconceptions (Score:4, Informative)
It seems like most of the replies here aren't fully informed about the issues of the case and are looking at the "free speech" in the subject the wrong way, so here's a brief overview.
Originally the prosecution looked to charge her for harassment and/or threatening behavior. However, under the law at the time, her speech was considered protected speech, and the prosecution decided that they didn't have a case for harassment. (The law has since been amended so if she did that now, she could very easily charged).
The prosecution ultimately decided to indict her [wired.com] using an anti-hacking law that prevents "unauthorized access to a computer." The argument is that by misrepresenting herself on myspace, she violated the Terms of Service. Therefore, her access to Myspace's Servers was unauthorized, and she committed a felony by using myspace while violating their ToS. The indictment is not for harassment/threatening behavior. It's for breaking the ToS of a website, which the hacking law has never been used for before.
As the EFF amicus brief points out, if violating the ToS of a site is criminal behavior, this has far reaching implications. Google has something in their Terms of Service that says you have to be 18 to use google. According to the prosecution in this case, anyone under 18 who does a google search is a felon. Facebook's ToS has a provision that says you must keep all information in your profile up to date. If i change my favorite movie and don't update my facebook account promptly, i'm a felon.
This is not an issue of harassment vs. free speech. I think we all agree that Lori Drew is an ass and ideally, she should be punished. However, don't try and get her on an obscure law that will have far reaching implications. Violating the terms of service on a website (which a large majority of people don't even read fully) should not be a criminal offense. That's what this case is seeking to do
get the law straight (Score:3, Informative)
This law does not make violating the terms of service a felony. The fraud perpetrated to gain access is only one element of the crime. You only end up falling under this law, in this case, if you use said access to commit a further crime(in this case harassment).