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."
Bad precedent... (Score:5, Insightful)
The facts in this particular case point to a truly twisted individual, but this individual is unable to be prosecuted for major jail time under current, non "novel" interpretations of law. The proper thing to do is to note this case, and realize the perpetrator is not guilty of a felony, and create a new law to handle this case, rather than trying to find some way to twist the law to put this person in jail "for something", which will open the floodgates of abuses.
Just because she used the Internet . . . (Score:0, Insightful)
Does not mean she has to be charged with 'cyber' crimes that can fuck the rest of us.
Get her for some form of child abuse or something, DON'T try to take MY rights away just because of some twat got bored with her soap operas.
This isn't about free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you expect? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
You're not likely to have an ongoing conversation with a fictitious person through the mail to the point that you think of them as your boyfriend.
The nature of the internet does make kinds of assholish behavior possible that were previously impractical.
Nothing tech about this case... (Score:5, Insightful)
Harassment and emotional abuse can be performed in person or over the Internet, and I've got to imagine that charges for wanton malicious actions against a minor will have much stiffer penalties than a simple ToS violation.
I don't mean to be too jaded here, but it doesn't much sense to me to be bringing an uncertain case against someone with a new law, unless the prosecuting attorney is seeking a landmark decision to put on a resume.
Certainly there must be a better choice than a new law when the actions of one lead another (esp. a minor) to suicide?
Hold on a second... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes, all the parents can do is be supportive and listen when their kid doesn't want to talk. If the kid won't talk to his/her parents... what did you want the parents to do? Tie them up and force them to speak?
Anyways, my point is that Good Parents don't always have good kids. And parents (unfortunately) can't always get their kids to open up and talk to them.
I guess your mom would kick you out of her basement if you were rebellious, so I can't expect you to understand.
But it IS about the law... (Score:1, Insightful)
> You do not have the right to torment an individual like this anymore than you have a right to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater or "I have a bomb" in an airport. AT some point, the safety of others does override your right to "free" speech.
Sure, but the problem is that there's no law for it yet, so they're making one up that WILL threaten free speech.
That's the problem. I have no problem with sending her to jail for making someone's life hell. I do have a problem with abusing the law to do that.
Civil Case (Score:5, Insightful)
The girl's family should sue this woman in Civil Court for the wrongful death of their daughter. The burden of proof is much lower in civil court than in criminal, and they could ruin this woman for the rest of her life -- which is a hell of a lot more than she deserves, because she still gets to draw breath, but their daughter doesn't. And there daughter would still be alive today if not for this woman's depraved actions.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:1, Insightful)
Fucking whimpy generation of losers.
Yeah, that emo thing really needs to die.
'Oh wah, my middle-upper middle class lifestyle, complete parents who care, a nice house in a decent neighborhood, and a decent amount of material wealth is just so horrible. People hate me just for no reason, not because I whine nonstop about nonexistent problems I saw on TV. Oh, woe is me!'
These self-centered assholes really need to get over themselves and get a life.
Re:lolwut (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone harasses you IRL, who do you blame? The... air that carried their words to your ears?
No, you blame the person who's harassing you, which is exactly what's going on in this case. Like it says in your own quote, the case is against the woman whose harassment drove this girl to suicide, not the web site she used as a medium.
Ban Freedom but dont ban freedom of speech (Score:2, Insightful)
Teenage suicide is down lower than it has been for years. We have given teenagers the tools to reach out to other peers and express their feelings. Suicide is a real problem that has been arround long before social networks and will remain long after.
In the case of an adult posing as a young teenager to manipulate and violate the poor teenage girl, tipping her over the edge of an already uneasy situation and pushing her to suicide is murder!
Kids are mean to other kids, thats the nature of the game, if you want to stop bullying you would have to stop teenage social interaction at the playground!
My point to this rambling, Society is at fault, not the internet and not freedom of speech.
Re:This isn't about free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
What type of sick world do you live in where befriending someone you know is emotionally vulnerable for the express purpose of degrading and humiliating them does not classify as tormenting or cruel?
If you seriously see this as normal or even slightly acceptable behavior I have to strongly question your societal values and the people you associate with.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking from personal experience, you don't get that depressed from a single person posting on a website/sending emails. You don't go from being a happy-go-lucky normal individual to a suicidal person overnight, over a month or likely even over a year. I started being depressed often from the age of about ten or eleven. I had a suicide attempt when I was twenty three. I do not blame anyone directly. I was in a bad place, and in retrospect the problem lay totally with ME. Why can't people learn to look at their own issues before pointing fingers and pushing blame to everyone else so quickly?
Re:This isn't about free speech (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's the god damned internet. That doesn't mean that people don't have emotions on the internet.
I'm actually against marking this as a criminal offense, also for free speech reasons, but seriously. The very idea that she wasn't tormenting that girl is total BS. You can torment someone in person, you can torment them on the phone, you can torment them over IM or on IRC or whatever. The internet does not grant magical anti-emotion powers.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:5, Insightful)
This is Slashdot. I bet 90% of us here would have come into contact with bullying or emotional harassment. Sure we've gotten our own back, but when you're a kid things are different. While I think the OP is being a little insensitive, I don't think you can draw a line from "Internet boyfriend acting like a dickhead" to "Ok I'm going to commit suicide".
Suicide is not a natural response to bullying, especially when that's not even face-to-face, which is what we experienced. If it was, most of us wouldn't be here. Either the girl had other problems which lead to her suicide (likely) or she was simply mentally unstable. In either of those cases the medium through which the straw that broke the camels back travelled is not relevant.
Re:This isn't about free speech (Score:3, Insightful)
If I tell you to jump out of building will you jump? Who is guilty if you decide to jump?
Freedom of Speech != Say Anything w/o Repurcussion (Score:5, Insightful)
You have the right to say anything, and be heard, however, what you say can get you into trouble.
If you don't like the war, and you protest, and make speeches that the war is bad, and that you think the president is mistaken, that's protected under the freedom of speech.
If you don't like the war, and you protest, and make threats against the president, then you will be held accountable and the threats will be taken seriously.
If you are a psychiatrist whose job it is to help people through emotional problems, and you tell your client - you're fucked up, chances are that not only will the patient not get better, but you will be sued, and if something happens to the patient, like suicide, then chances are you will be prosecuted in some form or other.
If you are a normal person, who, by using a false identity, abuses someone or their character in such a way that it erodes their self-esteem, sense of self-worth, sense of self, to such a degree that they commit suicide, then you are most definitely guilty of abuse, both mental and emotional abuse, and should be held accountable as contributing to the death of said person.
This would be the case regardless of the technology used. The only thing this technology granted was a sense of anonymity that was properly given up due to the bizarre circumstances of the case.
If you were to stand at your fence in your backyard and belittle the child-next-door, calling them names, worthless, pieces of garbage, day in and day out, chances are you'd be faced with at least a law-suit if not a visit by the police. Why would doing this over the internet be any different? Should someone who intentionally abuses another person be protected just because they used the internet to do it? Should they expect a right to privacy or anonymity just because they tried to hide their identity before making those actions? I don't think so, and would hope that you wouldn't as well.
Re:Hold on a second... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the kid won't talk to his/her parents... what did you want the parents to do? Tie them up and force them to speak?
Yeah, that wouldn't be bad.
When I was a teenager I was like this. (Not the suicidal bit, just the part where I didn't want to talk to my parents.) I think it would have been really good for me if they had sat down and really forced me to discuss things. I kept a lot of stuff to myself, and it wasn't healthy. I made some errors in high school and in my first year of college that I regret, and I wish somebody with more sense would have been aware enough of what was going on to talk to me, tell me how dumb I was being in a supportive manner, and set me straight. But my parents respected my wish to be left alone and as such I ended up on my own when I didn't really want to be.
Now, I turned out alright, and I don't hold this against my parents. But yeah, if your teens don't want to talk, force 'em. Make a habit out of sitting down with them and prying information out. Find out what's going on in their lives. If they don't like it, tough. A teenager may think he's an adult, may try to act like an adult, may go out and do adult things, but ultimately he's still a child (at least an the lower end of the range, like this girl was). And you're still that child's parents. You're not their friend, not their roommate. You're not doing them a favor by leaving them alone or respecting their wishes not to talk.
Far too many teenagers end up in an adversarial situation with their parents. And I think the cause is, paradoxically, because parents try to be too friendly with their children. Far too often, when a daughter hits the teen years her mother says, woo, now we can go out and do fun girly stuff together! The same thing with sons and fathers, except not girly. Parenting needs to be based on respect and authority, not friendship. Children usually already have friends, they don't need two more. What they don't have are role models, authority figures, and people who can give sound advice from a perspective of older age.
The most screwed up young adults I know are those whose parents tried to be friends with them. Conversely, the most well adjusted young adults I know are those whose parents stayed in the role as a parent. They weren't mean or cruel or overbearing, but they raised their kids instead of befriending them.
Re:This isn't about free speech (Score:4, Insightful)
What I think you're missing is the difference between "I can do something" and "I should do something".
This almost falls under my personal definition of torment as the woman did seek the girl out (if she hadnt and the girl had just found this fake boy online i would classify it as forthelulz and absolutely hilarious) with the intent to fuck with her, but that's the glory of the internet. You can fuck with anyone you want to (verbally, or would it be textually?) and pretend to be whoever you want, whatever you want, believe whatever you want, and just run with it.
Are you saying the reason it isn't torment is because the tormentor is anonymous? That doesn't seem logical definition of torment to me.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily; doing so requires an effort entirely disproportionate with the consequences of the fraud you committed. The State shouldn't prosecute you because there's no reason to- you didn't get anything out of it and neither will the State.
In this case, however, that's not true. This is where prosecutor's discretion does come into play.
Re:This isn't about free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a classic case of trolling.
Shitcock is trolling.
Posting photoshopped pictures of Obama with a crackpipe between his lips is trolling.
Creating a persona as a Born-Again Christian and attempting to "save" people in atheist forums is trolling.
She pretended to be a boy who liked her, girl fell in love with her e-boyfriend, e-boyfriend then called her a slut and this that and the other thing, and the girl, who was mad fucked in the head and should have been receiving help went and offed herself.
That isn't trolling. That's a pure mindfuck and should be treated as such.
mad fucked in the head
I didn't realize the hoodrats knew about /.
It sucks someone died
No, it doesn't. Coming home from the grocery store and discovering half your eggs are cracked sucks. Having to bury your teenage daughter because of the actions of a sadistic sack of shit - that knew she had mental problems and exploited them - is a tragedy and a crime.
but there was nothing tormenting or cruel about what happened.
Dude. You need help.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a hormone thing, and psychological development thing. Hormones at that age basically magnify emotions, and that causes overcompensation and confusion. Lack of psychological development is even simpler: When you're older, you've got the experience of this exact situation to know it's not worth killing yourself over.
Supercharged emotions plus mass confusion over new and disturbing experiences leads to mental breakdown. Must be nice; my brain is so damn hardened I've been through the most horrible emotional experiences and, looking back, still wish I would have killed myself. I will always do everything in my power to preserve my own life; but I can totally understand what would have to happen to someone to make them run screaming from any chance of seeing the next day, and the old bitch playing the cute neighbor boy set that girl up for the ABSOLUTE BEST WAY to do that.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:3, Insightful)
Suicide is not a natural response to bullying, especially when that's not even face-to-face, which is what we experienced.
Imagine your whole life is changed because you met one girl. Everything you thought mattered is irrelevant, and the only thing you want is to be with her, and take care of her. You get comfortable, it looks like you can make it happen, you work so hard, she smiles, she laughs. You start to realize you never really knew joy or happiness, and that you truly understand what life is about now.
Next day. She hates you. End of story.
Your life is now nothing. The pain is massive. Emotional pain can strip you of everything; no form of physical torture can compare. It will consume and destroy you; if it passes a certain point and you DON'T kill yourself off, you'll be left a hollow shell incapable of really recovering. You'll live a life lost, where everything seems pale and insignificant, incomplete, and you smile at the simple things when you can but still find no satisfaction in the finer joys of being alive.
When someone's already having emotional trouble, and is going through a hormonal/emotional development stage, and is lacking emotional growth experience to cope, they're ripe for crafting this exact situation. Probably not enough to really trash their life if they survive it, but enough to make it obvious to them that life isn't worth living right now.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
Take someone with a weak heart, strap them in a roller coaster and they might die right there and then. Take someone emotionally unstable, strap them in an emotional roller coaster and them might die right there and then.
And if you did in fact give free amusement park tickets to someone with a weak heart, and they went on a roller coaster of their own free will, and they did in fact have a heart attack and die - would the person giving them the tickets be charged with a felony like in this case? Even if they knew the person had a weak heart? I doubt ANY charges would be laid and if they were a $20 lawyer would get them off scott free.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's already a mechanism for dealing with this, it's called a restraining order.
How do you get a restraining order against someone who does not exist?
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an adult who pushed a minor, with malice aforethought, into a high state of agitation and personal anguish. In my mind, that's straight up child abuse.
Whether it's prosecutable or not is for others to figure out, but at the very least, an enormous wrongful death suit can and should commence following this case, if it comes to pass that she is acquitted - which she might be.
The case does threaten a piece of free speech, but this is an adult who communicated attacks on a minor, with intent and malice to cause emotional harm to her (and succeeded). The bitch is going to account for that crime, one way or the other.
The parents of that child should keep an eye on where Drew goes after all this is over, if she is free. If she gets a job, rents an apartment, and buys Internet service, they should have newspaper clippings and a letter in hand to deliver to each and every manager and employer. Let them know who they're serving/employing.
Maybe it doesn't provide justice, and maybe it won't do anything. But perhaps someone in a position to make something happen will read it, and decide not to let this woman live so comfortably with the lives she's so callously and indifferently destroyed.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:2, Insightful)
Theft of service is being committed. More importantly, fraud is being committed.
You mean like when you write a check or sign up for movie rentals or sign up for a gym or rent an apartment or give over your credit card? Your reasons are lame because those same risks apply in real life.
Because the person on the street is not providing you a service on the condition that you truthfully represent yourself.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:5, Insightful)
She didn't know it was an adult bullying her. And it wasn't even a "stupid jock type" in a school environment. It was someone acting like a douche bag via text. Words.
My point is that kids get bullied everyday. Face-to-face. They get abused emotionally, physically. That's not a good thing. It's a terrible thing. But it happens, and only a small proportion actually kill themselves. This girl apparently killed herself because someone she'd never met was writing bad words about her. Bullying is not good and it's not acceptable. I'm not that it is. But it's also foolish to pretend that this one particular case is all that's needed to make someone commit suicide.
That's why I think there were other problems with this girl - be they other forms of bullying at school or some kind of mental illness. If the real problem is bullying or mental illness then THOSE are the issues that should be argued about and debated in the media and in Parliament/Congress. Not things like MySpace's Terms and Conditions.
Re:Civil Case (Score:3, Insightful)
This woman may have been the catalyst, but the potential for suicide was already there. Should society as a whole walk around on eggshells to avoid whatever trigger will cause the already mentally unstable to go over the edge?
Let's say you honk your horn and some guy flips out and shoots himself. Now, in most places, honking your horn is illegal unless you are alerting someone to danger. So, should you then be charged to the full extent of the law?
First off, the potential for suicide is there in everyone with the ability to physically kill themselves.
Second, if you were to find out that your neighbor's kid has issues, and you set up an elaborate scheme with the intent to cause him or her serious emotional harm, and proceed to, you will of course be partially to blame for it. I am not sure how many people here get that Lori Drew was 40 something, picking on a teen with emotional problems. Regardless of the medium, she is partially responsible for this girls death.
If I honk my horn at some guy, and he kills himself, then he is just a nutcase we are probably better off without. But if I know the guy is actually 13 and has horrible reactions to honking horns and I set it up for him to be blasted repeatedly with horns and he loses his shit and kills himself, then yes, I expect to be prosecuted in Civil court at the very least, and quite probably criminal court
ex post facto laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden by the Constitution, i.e., you may not make something illegal after the fact and then prosecute for it. Of course, you can craft a law making any future act illegal and, if the individual commits the act AGAIN, can be prosecuted for the new act.
The problem in this case is that this shitty woman did something that was not illegal, just morally reprehensible. The "public" wants retribution, but has no legitimate legal recourse, so prosecutors must make a wild-ass no-common-sense-used interpretation of an existing law that no sane, mature, reasonable person could make an argument to support so they may prosecute her. If she is financially poor, she will be unable to appeal and will be "punished", but could she appeal, she would likely eventually be exonerated because of the savage and unreasonable torture the prosecution must apply to existing law to make this a criminal case.
It's simply not worth sacrificing our constitutional rights and civility to grind out revenge on this piece of shit woman. Only civil court can provide all the revenge that can be squeezed out of this woman, but for the public, that's not enough.
So public lust for revenge and the prosecutions insatiability for pandering to it is now threatening your safety and mine. You want to provide the DHS yet another weapon to use against regular law-abiding citizens? Shame on you.
Re:Civil Case (Score:3, Insightful)
This woman was not 'the catalyst.' This is not about the potential for suicidal behaviour. This is more like the potential for my arm to break, and someone coming along and purposefully breaking it, and then I get an infection from having an open wound and die. The act of breaking my arm did not directly cause my death, but my death would not have occurred had my arm not been broken.
There is also a difference between simply having 'a bad day' and snapping, or having one thing go wrong and snapping at the drop of a hat, and snapping in response to a long term deception and prolonged or extreme psychological torture, which is what this amounts to. Young Persons such as children and teenagers and young adults do not have the same sort of coping skills and ability to deal with psychological trauma that mentally mature adults do. Things which an adult would shrug off, such as someone calling their shoes ugly, can cause a teenager to break down into hysterics and depression.
The fact that young people are less well able to deal with such things is why society takes a particularly harsh view on adults who prey on teenage minors, and upon teenage minors who prey upon the prepubescent. It's one of the sources of laws which say those above 18 can't have sex with those below it.
If you can't understand one of the simple foundations of our society, then I think you need to go study humanity a bit harder.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine your whole life is changed because you met one girl. Everything you thought mattered is irrelevant, and the only thing you want is to be with her, and take care of her. You get comfortable, it looks like you can make it happen, you work so hard, she smiles, she laughs. You start to realize you never really knew joy or happiness, and that you truly understand what life is about now. Next day. She hates you. End of story.
I realise this is Slashdot, and not Lavalife, but I don't need to imagine. My girlfriend of a few years cheated on me. Am I killing myself? No.
This is silly. Sometimes people have to take responsibility for their actions, or maybe look a bit further for what the root causes were of the problem. I'm not trying to understate her death in anyway. I'm trying to say that I find it difficult to believe that her life is just peachy and then when her internet friend whom she's never met says nasty things about her, she commits suicide. I think that this whole "MySpace/Internet/Evil Adult" thing is taking us away from the real discussion which should be about bullying and mental illness.
Re:Civil Case (Score:3, Insightful)
The refutation of this argument is as follows:
You are going to die sooner or later. Does that then mean that I can kill you right now and that I should face no punishment, since you would have died eventually anyway?
In case you're too dense to understand, the answer is "No, I can't kill you and face no consequences under that defence."
Likewise, if someone is falling off the Empire State Building, and I shoot them in the head as they pass the third floor, killing them a few tenths of a second before they hit the pavement, I'm guilty of murder, because I have committed an act that prematurely ended the life of another.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine your whole life is changed because you met one girl. Everything you thought mattered is irrelevant, and the only thing you want is to be with her, and take care of her. You get comfortable, it looks like you can make it happen, you work so hard, she smiles, she laughs. You start to realize you never really knew joy or happiness, and that you truly understand what life is about now.
That happens to millions of people. Yeah, it hurts for a while, but you either move on, or you get so caught up in yourself that you keep dwelling in something that happens to everyone.
Your life is now nothing. The pain is massive. Emotional pain can strip you of everything; no form of physical torture can compare. It will consume and destroy you; if it passes a certain point and you DON'T kill yourself off, you'll be left a hollow shell incapable of really recovering. You'll live a life lost, where everything seems pale and insignificant, incomplete, and you smile at the simple things when you can but still find no satisfaction in the finer joys of being alive.
What? You're joking, right? That's pretty self-centered, ain't it? To compare something so temporary with actual torture, to say that something so common will take all joy out of your life. If what you say were true, NO ONE would be happy.
When someone's already having emotional trouble, and is going through a hormonal/emotional development stage, and is lacking emotional growth experience to cope, they're ripe for crafting this exact situation. Probably not enough to really trash their life if they survive it, but enough to make it obvious to them that life isn't worth living right now.
No. If someone really kills themselves over that, they were either raised to think they're the only human in existence, or there is something else massively wrong in their lives. I'm not trying to sound cold to the girl, but as far as I can tell, suicide is caused more by self absorption that this 'pain' you speak of. Either way, the parent poster is correct; suicide is not a natural response to bullying.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that an adult with a fully developed brain deliberately set out to screw with a kid. Kids may do the same, but they're unlikely to be as competent at the manipulation because they don't have the perspective provided by experience and maturation of the brain.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't mean offence to you, but what you're saying is kind of silly. Your logic goes "Well it was her first boyfriend and she was teen. So therefore she committed suicide. And if you were a teen and it was your first girlfriend, you would also have committed suicide".
If that was the case, a lot of people wouldn't be alive. Why can't you just accept that I find it extremely hard to believe that being dumped by an online boyfriend who said mean things about her was the only thing that went wrong in her life and was the only factor in her suicide?
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes that's also a problem. And she should probably be charged with harassment or something like that. But she isn't. Instead we're setting stupid precedents with far-reaching ramifications that won't do anything to stop bullying or punish bullies.
Seriously, my only point has been that the problem is bullying. Let's focus on that. If there isn't a criminal charge for the pre-mediated and long-term harassment of a child by an adult then there should be. Deal with that problem before screwing up things you don't understand.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine your whole life is changed because you met one girl. Everything you thought mattered is irrelevant, and the only thing you want is to be with her, and take care of her. You get comfortable, it looks like you can make it happen, you work so hard, she smiles, she laughs. You start to realize you never really knew joy or happiness, and that you truly understand what life is about now.
Next day. She hates you. End of story.
So, the typical high school romance?
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:5, Insightful)
So that means that this woman shouldn't have to own up to her own actions?
I was driven to attempt suicide, in 8th grade, by ... well, it all stemmed from *one* incident, and then it snowballed from there. Eventually, the whole damn school would just relentless pick on me. I tried everything to stop it - ignoring it, fighting back, going through authority, nothing works like that.
Granted, some good things came of that, like the fact that I became involved in the OSS community as a way to escape (in fact, thanks to working on OSS in various ways, I'm able to be completely without my prozac ^-^).
Just because someone was 'emotionally weak' is no reason to excuse those who torment them. That's like saying that just because someone couldn't handle being shot at repeatedly that they 'deserved' to die.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:2, Insightful)
You fail to understand the charges and your so-called point proves it.
You are thinking the injury in the case is to the girl, but in actuality, the injury in the charges are to MySpace, namely in damage to reputation, loss of revenue, legal costs, etc. The injuries to MySpace were done after obtaining an account through deception and using the account to badger and harrass someone in violation of the TOS. Obtaining the access through fraud and then abusing that access in violation of the TOS is what makes the access illegal.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:5, Insightful)
And she should probably be charged with harassment or something like that.
There's an old legal axiom that, "hard cases make bad law." This was a hard case in that an adult deliberately harassed a young girl and that harassment caused a nasty result. Since everyone was up in arms against her behavior, which was apparently not within any state or local laws, the prosecutors stretched to find anything that they could charge her with and thus satisfy the "somebody needs to do something" contingent. However, if this charge continues, the bad law will set another precedent to strip another bit of freedom from the rest of us.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's not harassment; it's simply notifying employers that someone they may be hiring is a bad hire."
That's exactly what harassment is, that that's exactly the wrong response. Ruining lives is not justice, and should never be condoned in a civilized society. What you propose is no better than what she did, deliberately and systematically ruining a life.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep..I mean it has happened before...awhile back, I think it was in L.A., where a guy had hidden video recording equipment in peoples' homes, and was recording them having sex and whatnot...when caught, it caused a big uproar, but, in the end, there was no law against what he did. They pretty much had to let him go, but, passed laws concerning this.
ON this case, however, I'm very apprehensive letting them pass a harassment law...it will likely be so broad that most ANY speech will be deemed illegal.
We already have laws on the books in meatspace that can be applied to the internet...threatening speech. The trouble in this case is....a young girl killed herself. While it was sad...it was also a case of a kid that was troubled to begin with. I mean, breaking up with an imaginary boyfriend she's never met in meatspace and killing yourself over it, is a sign she wasn't stable to begin with. Heck, I'm surprised they didn't say she was listening to heavy metal music when she offed herself...just to try that one again.
What the grown lady did was wrong, but, the death wasn't her fault...who knows what would have pushed this girl to the edge. Words on a screen aren't going to kill a normal person. The girl needed help apparently WAY before this incident.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it shows the chick that offed herself, had issues way before this happened. If it hadn't been this incident that pushed her over the edge, it might have been a story about a beached whale, or listening to Ozzy's "Suicide Solution" backwards or something.
Re:Which law? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because I don't think the police department was able to find one. Nor was the prosecutor. And I'm pretty sure they know what "assault" and "harassment" are.
But they instead decided to rely on some BS about making breaking a website's Terms of Service into a felony, [...]
You know, a cynical person might say they chose this particular charge in order to try to set a precedent in a case where a jury really won't want to deliver a "not guilty" verdict...
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, if the person with the weak heart got on the roller coaster of their own free will, without a gun their head...it is their fault.
No one in your scenario forced them go get on. Coerced, sure, but, the person still had the choice.
This girl made her choice to take her life...sad, but, no one's fault but hers.
Ahh... and the end result of stupidity... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, we all know we need more laws to keep us "safe" from the terminally stupid.
Lets see... if you had kids... how would you raise them? To be offended by losing at kickball and have the "authorities" pass new rules outlawing kickball in school, because, like, gosh, someone's feelings got hurt by losing? To be offended by bullies and whine to "authority figures" to save them? I know this is the wrong forum to ask reasonable attitude and problem questions like these. Seems almost obvious, if you're defending the terminally stupid, and their idiot parents who were too busy to raise their kid to be strong enough to make it, you'll probably end up defending such idiocy as "the government should make it illegal to harass the terminally stupid until they do what they'd do eventually ayways."
Because we all know we need MORE laws and punishment for harmless hazing crap that ALL of us put up with. And it was painful until we either learned, or had it taught to us (if our minds were capable of learning and thus surviving) that what other people think is usually pretty worthless. Most people are willing victims and have been raised by the current societies to be WAITING victims and victim worshipers. You'll have to pardon me from abstaining from the rampant victim worship. Willing victims are to be detested not worshiped. Its like the jews who willingly got on those trains, or the japanese who willingly got interned in the USA, or the fools in germany who surrendered their arms to the authorities or the fools who didn't put up a sign "trespassers will be shot" in New Orleans during Katrina. You don't let the bullies know to stop early, or STOP them... and you end up a victim.
Most people today aspire to be good little dogs, to obey, and to hopefully never get kicked. But guess what... shit happens. The only way shit will NOT happen, is to be locked up in a padded cell... and even then your jailers will mistreat you.
Just like reading an article about some idiot who hurt himself by not wearing eye protection while using power tools. What is the headline?? "New regulations may be necessary for construction sites."
Gee, you mean the huge OSHA bureaucracy couldn't stop one retard who wasn't wearing his recommended gear, namely eye protection? What the hell more can be done to keep the stupid safe from their stupidity? hell we shouldn't even be paying to keep stupids in good health. Their fully deserved darwinian deserts would be to be permitted to fully enjoy the fruits of their stupidity... and I should fully enjoy the fruits of my labors, as should you and everyone else. Instead we have to pay taxes to keep "lawmakers" in their non productive labors of telling us how to walk and talk around stupids. Yep, more political correctness. As if there wasn't enough.
Some day, all this shit will blow back. I just hope its before I have kids. I really don't want any child of mine growing up amongst this pathetic generation of weaklings. Hell if I raise them right they'll be punished for being "insensitive"... "let the other kids win a turn"... "oh now we have to make that game illegal too, because winning damages self esteem for the losers."
I mean damn... I'm not that old, but when I grew up, losing was something to learn from (I agree that few do, the proper victim mindset is to get depressed when losing, and its a mindset that is inculcated by movies, literature and school)... in school it was always frowned upon to make mistakes... outside of school mistakes were crucial and very useful. I believe that old greek fellow who shouted Eureka had spilled something, hadn't he?
The voice changer arguement.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lori mounted a systematic and cruel attack to inflict emotional harm on a minor over a period of months. This goes far beyond name calling or a prank. It was deliberate and it was designed to harm. The tools used to harass have little to do with the case in my opinion.
Is Lori is responsible for the child's death? Perhaps, but how do you determine the weight of her contribution? I for one have no idea and personally believe no one can say that with any certainty.
What seems rather clear to me is an act of child abuse, harassment, and fraud.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:2, Insightful)
And yeah sure, you could whine about number rigging and high school students not seriously filling out the forms or just trying to make an image, but the fact is that suicide isn't the rarity that you make it out to be. This is why we have suicide hotlines and the like.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
So because you're not personally affected by this sort of thing, there's nothing wrong with it?
It's not that simple (Score:5, Insightful)
1. At a quick googlin, 16.3% of the deaths in males aged between 15-24 is suicide. Way ahead of, say, cancer at 6.8% or heart disease at 3.9%. That was a statistic for 1998, but I don't expect things to have changed too dramatically. Apparently in Australia in 2005, two thirds of the deaths between 12 and 24 years old were suicides. Two thirds. That's immense.
So it's not an entirely unnatural response to stress and depression, either. It happens.
2. Well, yes. And the perpetrator deliberately used that.
Yes, some people are more fragile than others. That doesn't excuse preying on them.
To give some analogies, just because some old lady barely walks to a walking stick, it may make it easier to snatch her purse and run away, but it doesn't make it more morally justifiable. Just because someone is in a wheelchair, it may make it easier to mug him (I mean, it's not like he's gonna dodge or run away too fast), but again it's not more morally justifiable. Etc.
If anything, from where I stand, it just makes the perpetrator more heartless and worthy of contempt.
In this case the lady _knew_ that the neighbour's girl is depressed and suicidal. She had already talked about suicide in third grade, and was seeing a therapist about it ever since. And she just took it as an invitation to try to actually drive her to suicide. I'm sorry, I can't really see her as anything else than a monster.
3. We're not talking just a random forum flame war, or one mean message or two. Lori Drew spent a whole fucking year first gaining the girl's trust, and then mounting a _massive_ online campaign against her. She not only posted all the girl's secrets, but also produced a storm of messages about how Megan is fat and a _slut_.
More importantly, this is the final message that pushed the girl to suicide: "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you."
I'm sorry, but telling someone who's already massively depressed and suicidal that the world would be better without her...
It's not just callous or insensitive. The whole thing reeks of deliberately creating the setup and then as much stress as possible, to make sure she breaks down. And spending a year for that. A whole year dedicated to killing the neigbour's daughter.
I don't know about you, but in my book that's premeditated murder. The whole sequence of events served only one purpose and achieved it.
4. You _could_ say that the girl could/should have been tough and ignored it, but that still doesn't excuse the perpetrator.
I mean, seriously, if I were to knife you and take your wallet, equally it could be argued that you could/should have been spry and dodged the knife. You could/should have taken some martial arts lessons and disarmed the attacker. It still doesn't excuse the criminal, either way.
Plus, again, she chose a victim who was already known as an easy target for that.
Pretty much. Regardless of the medium involved, it's still a convoluted case of premeditated murder.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:4, Insightful)
what you are ignoring is that we all have some armor against getting hurt by other people. If you know someone is your enemy then there is less of an effect on you since you know that this person isn't your friend and is just trying to get to you.
Everybody wears masks and mostly you get to see what they want you to see we play roles be it doctor engineer whatever. Mostly people automatically say fine, when asked how are you. It's a ritual you say fine because the other person doesn't want to know most of the time. Most interaction is just role playing.
Love on the other hand tends to go with trust and you share things which makes you vulnerable, your without your armor, you might not share everything probably don't for most of us.
Having a strong emotional bond with someone, means that someone could hurt you beyond anything anybody else could do.
What I'm saying is the person you love the most can hurt you so badly you might commit suicide, most of us will do something less extreme, get drunk or maybe not date for a while.
Experience tells us that relationships fail and you get over it.
This girl did not have this experience and to top it off she wasn't just dumped
but faced an overwhelming assault on her whole emotional being from the person she was closest to.
An interesting legal argument in uk law at least is that you can be found guilty of murder if you procure someone to act as your instrument, ie hire a hitman, or persuade your boyfriend to kill your husband for example.
did "josh" procure megan to act as his instrument to kill megan? Ok "josh" probably didn't want megan dead just seriously hurt. Therefore a lesser charge such as manslaughter (murder in the 3rd degree?) should apply. I should explain Murder carries a mandatory life sentence in the uk, Manslaughter allows a judge considerable leeway in what sentence to apply.
Manslaughter would seem to be a reasonable sentence for the circumstances and actions surrounding megans death.
The issue of bullying in general is a nasty can of worms to open , when does standard working practice become abuse? It isn't easy to define, evidence is hard to obtain and what may be devastating to one individual will have no effect on another.
Finally at Megans age with her lack of experience, the hormonal changes she was experiencing as most teenagers do with the abuse of trust from "josh" Is suicide so surprising?
I would agree though MySpace's terms and conditions should have no bearing on this what so ever.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. People shouldn't 'have' to learn to 'deal with it'. This shit just plain shouldn't happen. And you know what? It's not a lack of backbone in the victim's case. It's that some crazy bitch with a fucked up vendetta against this girl, for whatever reason, exploited her weaknesses to the extent that the girl killed herself. While not murder, as she didn't pull the trigger, she is certainly culpable for doing more than her fair share for making this girl commit suicide.
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
Try reversing that: if the suggested solution is not against the law, then neither was what she did. Also consider substiting morals or ethics for law.
Re:Die Emo Die (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bad precedent... (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is an adult who pushed a minor, with malice aforethought, into a high state of agitation and personal anguish. In my mind, that's straight up child abuse."
Many parents do that with some regularity. It's not good parenting, but in one form or another it's common as dirt.
So... how do you propose to outlaw bad parenting??