Background: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/11/24/state/n110308S66.DTLJury convicts mom of lesser charges in online hoax

(11-27) 04:09 PST LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A Missouri mother on trial in a landmark cyberbullying case was convicted Wednesday of only three minor offenses for her role in a mean-spirited Internet hoax that apparently drove a 13-year-old girl to suicide. The federal jury could not reach a verdict on the main charge against 49-year-old Lori Drew — conspiracy — and rejected three other felony counts of accessing computers without authorization to inflict emotional harm.

Instead, the panel found Drew guilty of three misdemeanor offenses of accessing computers without authorization. Each count is punishable by up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. Drew could have gotten 20 years if convicted of the four original charges.

U.S. District Judge George Wu declared a mistrial on the conspiracy count. There was no immediate word on whether prosecutors would retry her.

Prosecutors said Drew and two others created a fictitious 16-year-old boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages from him to teenage neighbor Megan Meier. The "boy" then dumped Megan in 2006, saying, "The world would be a better place without you." Megan promptly hanged herself with a belt in her bedroom closet.

Prosecutors said Drew wanted to humiliate Megan for saying mean things about Drew's teenage daughter. They said Drew knew Megan suffered from depression and was emotionally fragile.

"Lori Drew decided to humiliate a child," U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien, chief federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, told the jury during closing arguments. "The only way she could harm this pretty little girl was with a computer. She chose to use a computer to hurt a little girl, and for four weeks she enjoyed it."

O'Brien, who pronounced the case the nation's first cyberbullying trial, said the jury's decision sent a worthy message: "If you have children who are on the Internet and you are not watching what they are doing, you better be."Am I the only one deeply disturbed by the turn of events here?

Yes, the woman was mean and said things that were not nice. No, she should not be put in a cage for life -- which is what prosecutors want to do, by bending laws intended for something else altogether -- because she wasn't nice.

Granted, the hung jury on the felony counts is a slight silver lining, but it gets much worse. In response to this incident, Missouri swiftly enacted a "cyberbullying" law that makes it a felony, punishable by up to four years in prison, for an adult to make a teenager feel bad over the Internet. No, I'm not kidding; read it yourself (http://www.senate.mo.gov/08info/BTS_Web/Bill.aspx?SessionType=r&BillID=147).

So if you post an opinion that libertarians are worthless and the world would be better without them, and a 17-year-old Missourian libertarian reads it and is offended, you can be put in a cage for four years, even if nothing happens. WTF?

And not to be left out of the stampede, a whole bunch of other states, including possibly my own, are enacting their own cyberbullying laws. (Do it for the children!)

The greatest irony is the U.S. Attorney's comment in the last paragraph. This jury verdict does NOT send the message to parents that they should be watching what their children are doing. It sends the message that if they don't do their job and something bad happens, they need not worry, because someone else is going to be blamed for it. In the rush to enact cyberbullying laws, no one bothered to examine the underlying causes for the incident. Just lynch the mean woman and be done with it.

This whole incident is a disgusting, wholesale violation of our rights.

California Penal Code 401.

401. Every person who deliberately aids, or advises, or encourages
another to commit suicide, is guilty of a felony.


If you are walking along the Golden Gate bridge.
And you spy a potential suicidal jumper.
And you coax him into jumping, that is a felony.
Even if all you said to him was, "The world would be better off without you."

Nothing really different here. Except it did not happen in California.

You may claim all you like that it is freedom of speech, or whatever.
Or that you have a 'right' to help encourage someone to kill themselves.
But you would be guilty of a felony.

California Penal Code 401.

401. Every person who deliberately aids, or advises, or encourages
another to commit suicide, is guilty of a felony.


If you are walking along the Golden Gate bridge.
And you spy a potential suicidal jumper.
And you coax him into jumping, that is a felony.
Even if all you said to him was, "The world would be better off without you."

Nothing really different here. Except it did not happen in California.You're wrong. You can't violate Penal Code section 401 simply by making statements which proximately cause a suicide. Here is a quote from the court of appeal in In re Ryan N., 92 Cal. App. 4th 1359 (2001):Although on its face the statute may appear to criminalize simply giving advice or encouragement to a potential suicide, the courts have--again by analogy to the law of aiding and abetting--required something more than mere verbal solicitation of another person to commit a hypothetical act of suicide. Instead, the courts have interpreted the statute as proscribing "the direct aiding and abetting of a specific suicidal act. . . . Some active and intentional participation in the events leading to the suicide are required in order to establish a violation." (McCollum v. CBS, Inc. (1988) 202 Cal. App. 3d 989, 1007 [249 Cal. Rptr. 187], first italics in original, second and third italics added.) Thus, in order to prove a violation of section 401 it is necessary to establish all of the following essential elements: (1) the defendant specifically intended the victim's suicide; (2) the defendant undertook some active and direct participation in bringing about the suicide, such as by furnishing the victim with the means of suicide; and, finally, (3) the victim actually committed a specific, overt act of suicide. (Ibid.; People v. Matlock (1959) 51 Cal. 2d 682, 694 [336 P.2d 505, 71 A.L.R.2d 605]; Donaldson v. Lungren, supra, 2 Cal. App. 4th at p. 1625.) So yes, if you're standing on the Golden Gate bridge taking a chance to jump before they build that idiotic $50 million net, I can walk by, say the world would be better without you, and I would be guilty of nothing at all.

Besides, the "cyberbullying" laws are far worse than even your wrong interpretation of Penal Code section 401, since they punish "emotional distress," e.g., an adult making a teenager feel bad. The teen doesn't have to commit suicide, or do anything at all as a result of feeling bad.

Legislatively forced niceness, at gunpoint. You're really defending that?

It's nice to see that some judges still believe in the Constitution of the United States.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/02/national/a030043D87.DTL&tsp=1Judge tentatively acquits woman in MySpace case

(07-02) 13:01 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) --

A federal judge on Thursday tentatively threw out the convictions of a Missouri mother for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who ended up committing suicide.

Drew was convicted in November, but the judge said that if she is to be found guilty of illegally accessing computers, anyone who has ever violated the social networking site's terms of service would be guilty of a misdemeanor. That would be unconstitutional, he said.

"You could prosecute pretty much anyone who violated terms of service," he said.Amen. We need more judges like this.

Why are you dragging out 1 year old posts?

A piece of **** person(not human) like Lori Drew deserves to be shot in the face.
****ed by Michael Morales. And have her tits cut off. Then sodomized with a hammer.

You people are ****s.

Just ban me please.

It will be interesting to watch this one play out...


'NYPOST: YOU DON'T DO THIS TO A KID!' (http://www.nypost.com/seven/07032009/news/regionalnews/you_dont_do_this_to_a_kid__177431.htm)

By KIERAN CROWLEY and TODD VENEZIA
July 3, 2009

It was a "horrific" plot.

A Long Island woman allegedly tried to get revenge on a 9-year-old girl who ar gued with her daughter by giving a throng of sex- seeking men the child's home phone number through a Craigslist ad.

argery Tannenbaum, 40, alreadly accused of harassment in the sick scheme, was slapped with even more serious charges at her arraign ment yesterday -- and the young victim's mother spoke out for the first time.

"You don't do this to a child!" the woman said at her Hauppauge home. "What she did was horrific, and hopefully the courts will take care of it."

[More... (http://www.nypost.com/seven/07032009/news/regionalnews/you_dont_do_this_to_a_kid__177431.htm)]

A piece of **** person(not human) like Lori Drew deserves to be shot in the face.A libertarian, wanting to criminalize bullying?

Kids also kill themselves when their lover leaves them. Perhaps we should criminalize breaking up, too.

As long as we keep encouraging the adults to be bad parents and shift the blame to someone else when something goes wrong, everything will be just fine.

It was a "horrific" plot.

A Long Island woman allegedly tried to get revenge on a 9-year-old girl who ar gued with her daughter by giving a throng of sex- seeking men the child's home phone number through a Craigslist ad.

argery Tannenbaum, 40, alreadly accused of harassment in the sick scheme, was slapped with even more serious charges at her arraign ment yesterday -- and the young victim's mother spoke out for the first time.

"You don't do this to a child!" the woman said at her Hauppauge home. "What she did was horrific, and hopefully the courts will take care of it."And where was that mother through all this? How did her daughter get to be suicidal with zero self-esteem?

What's horrific here is the parenting, or lack thereof. Too bad that isn't a crime, since all this bad parenting is costing the taxpayers quite a bit of money.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/02/myspace.suicide/index.html

A federal judge tentatively overturned the conviction of a Missouri woman accused of using MySpace to deceive a teenage girl who eventually committed suicide, a U.S. attorney's spokesman told CNN...

...Drew was to be sentenced Thursday, but California U.S. District Judge George Wu -- who heard the case because MySpace is based in Los Angeles -- instead decided to not uphold the jury's finding.

The case was most likely thrown out for the reason that it is rather wrong to make a private web sites terms of service enforced by the government by threat of imprisonment.

What Drew did was wrong. But it was, at the time, not illegal, at least not with the law they charged her with.

Should it be illegal? Well, it was, in once sense, a form of harassment. Should harassment be illegal? I think so. Should this form be? A good question.

Another question might be should Megan Meier's family be able to sue Drew?

These are not easy questions to answer. This is not "Legislating Niceness (at Gunpoint)". This is about how far someone can go in bullying someone before it becomes illegal. It is about harassment.

Do you want to say that all harassment should be legal? So I can call you every night at 3am, wake you up and curse you out legally? How about writing threatening letters to you? To your family? Spread rumors about you? Make up fake "evidence" that you are a child molester and send it to everyone who knows you and the media?

These are difficult questions to answer. There is a fine line between Free Speech and harassment. I do worry that the government goes too far with their "zero tolerance" policies and such. Normal joking and speech and childhood playing is a part of life. The government should only step in if it crosses the line. Where that line is, is something that we need to think about.

Another question might be should Megan Meier's family be able to sue Drew?I should be able to sue the dead girl's mother for being a bad parent and causing all this mess, and waste of taxpayer dollars.

She caused me injury and I want my money back.

I want treble damages if she has further offspring, based on the probability of future injury to me, the taxpayer.

And that's real injury, in terms of real dollars lost, not this emotional distress crap.This is not "Legislating Niceness (at Gunpoint)". This is about how far someone can go in bullying someone before it becomes illegal.

Do you want to say that all harassment should be legal? So I can call you every night at 3am, wake you up and curse you out legally? How about writing threatening letters to you? To your family? Spread rumors about you? Make up fake "evidence" that you are a child molester and send it to everyone who knows you and the media?This is NOT harassment or defamation, both of which have necessary legal remedies.

Even bullying is not the most accurate term.

This is simply a prank, albeit a slightly cruel one.

It's really not much different than the common situation where one party in a relationship will string another along, use them, and then dump them. It's milder, actually, because it was only an anonymous Internet relationship.

No, it isn't nice. But it is the price you pay to live in a society that purportedly protects freedom of speech, expression, and thought.

If you start putting people in cages when they do things that simply aren't nice, you no longer have a free society. You have politically correct totalitarianism, where you legislate niceness, at gunpoint.

This is simply a prank, albeit a slightly cruel one.

No, it isn't nice. But it is the price you pay to live in a society that purportedly protects freedom of speech, expression, and thought.
OK, how far would you agree a "prank" could go.

As editor of the New York Times, I decided to do a "prank" and add an article to our paper naming you as a child molester.

Or, let's be a bit more realistic and say I use Facebook or such to name you as a child molester, publishing your name, address, phone number, email address, photograph and other personal info.

It's all just a prank, right?

Clearly, if you get phone calls, email, and death threats, and this leads you, being already depressed, to suicide, then I'll be sure to blame your parents.

At what point does someone have to take responsibility for their actions, or can they always just claim it is a "prank"?

As editor of the New York Times, I decided to do a "prank" and add an article to our paper naming you as a child molester.That is defamation.

Defamation has been recognized as a legal cause of action for centuries, for very obvious reasons. Because if you publish lies about me, I may lose money, other people aren't going to like me, I may be harassed, and so on.

This is not defamation. There were no false statements made regarding the girl's character, and nothing was published, both essential elements of defamation.

oreover, in the United States defamation is purely a civil, not a criminal matter. You don't go to prison for falsely and publicly calling someone a child molester, although you may be liable for damages.

It is also not any form of harassment, which fundamentally requires some sort of unwanted contact. This contact was desired.

The bottom line is, if we have a relationship and you dump me saying (privately) that the world would be better off without me, and I then go commit suicide, you don't deserve to go to prison. (In my view you don't even deserve to be sued civilly, and the cause of action of intentional infliction of emotional distress should be removed from the books.)

It's nice to see that some judges still believe in the Constitution of the United States.

Judge tentatively acquits woman in MySpace case

(07-02) 13:01 PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) --

A federal judge on Thursday tentatively threw out the convictions of a Missouri mother for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who ended up committing suicide.

Drew was convicted in November, but the judge said that if she is to be found guilty of illegally accessing computers, anyone who has ever violated the social networking site's terms of service would be guilty of a misdemeanor. That would be unconstitutional, he said.

"You could prosecute pretty much anyone who violated terms of service," he said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/02/national/a030043D87.DTL&tsp=1Amen. We need more judges like this.
No, we don't.

When someone agrees to a website's terms of service, he or she is voluntarily entering a contract. And contracts are 'supposed' to mean something (since you're an Obama supporter, I can understand your opposition to such a statement.) If you disagree with a website's term of service, don't use that website.

Does that mean that everyone who violates Myspace's terms of service will automatically be prosecuted? Under a libertarian system, no. What it does mean that if a breach of contract is brought to court, it will be enforced if the breach is confirmed, rather or not the judge 'feels' it's the right thing to do or not.

When someone agrees to a website's terms of service, he or she is voluntarily entering a contract. And contracts are 'supposed' to mean something

(unneccesary political slur removed from quote by me)

The terms of service are part of civil law.
isdemeanor on the other hand is criminal law.
The first can get you legally kicked out of the service and may find you liable for damage you caused (to be paid to the injured party or parties). The second can get you locked up in jail and even executed (in the USA at least).

That is quite a difference, and any escalation from one legal system to the other should be very carefully considered. The DA, in this case, felt that the woman was responsible for the suicide and wanted to prosecute her. He also was too lazy (or knew he had no case) to collect proof of her guilt that would hold up to the standards of a criminal law case. He instead tried to cut corners and stretch civil law to encompas an area that belongs to criminal law. The judge rightly cut off that approach. Her breaching the terms of service had nothing to do with her responsibility for the suice.

The constitution, on the other hand, has nothing to do with all this (and gets dragged out far too often by people who want to justify their opinions).


Eri

When someone agrees to a website's terms of service, he or she is voluntarily entering a contract.Contracts are enforced through the civil system, where you generally pay money or in limited cases are enjoined to not do something.

They are also a private matter between the parties to the contract, not a matter of public concern.

If MySpace wants to terminate this woman's account, they are certainly in their rights to do so.

The State does NOT, and should never, have the right to put people in cages over a simple breach of a private contract.

The constitution, on the other hand, has nothing to do with all this (and gets dragged out far too often by people who want to justify their opinions).Yes it does. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee due process, which includes the "void for vagueness" doctrine. If a criminal law is too vague for the average person to understand what is prohibited, or if it is so vague as to allow arbitrary enforcement, then it violates due process and is unconstitutional.

Think about all the web sites you visit and the software you buy, and all the licenses and terms of services that you never read, that can be updated at any moment without notice, and that often include totally arbitrary rules like "we can terminate you for rude behavior."

If you start criminalizing that, you put MySpace and every other big provider or software company in the position of a dictator, allowing them to put any person they like in prison, whenever they feel like it. That level of tyranny is something our founding fathers specifically sought to avoid, and I am disturbed that so-called libertarians would want to discard such an essential freedom just because they happen to dislike the woman who wants to exercise that freedom.