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A Despicable Act
Regarding the now-infamous “MySpace Suicide” case, Lori Drew committed a despicable act when she created a fake MySpace account to bully a thirteen-year-old girl, and there should be some consequences for driving the child to suicide. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Drew was obviously in the wrong, the courts had difficulty figuring out what law she could have broken. In the end she was charged with three misdemeanors of accessing computers without authorization, because she had broken MySpace’s Terms of Service in creating a fake account. However, the decision to charge her for violating MySpace’s Terms of Service has frightening consequences. Terms of Service abuses are rampant on the Internet, and are often unintentional. Turning them into a crime creates a huge potential for abuse of the legal system, as it could be inundated with people bringing their petty Internet squabbles into the courtroom.
Furthermore, should every arbitrary rule written by the owner of an Internet group now be considered law? Some forums prohibit writing in a way that is difficult to read. Does that mean writing in bright yellow font on a particular online forum is now a crime? Theoretically, it could be. Hopefully no one would be prosecuted for such a minor rule violation, but it is easy to see how someone with a grudge could try to create trouble for their enemies using this precedent.
I think that it’s a huge pity that there does not seem to be a law that can put Lori Drew in jail for a long time and I admire the ingenuity in finding something to charge her with, as this was a very unusual situation. However, the final charges make me nervous, because while Drew undoubtedly deserves a conviction, this may lead the way for many minor rule-breakers to find themselves in serious legal trouble.