Woman Indicted In MySpace Suicide Case

longacre writes "The Associated Press is reporting an indictment has been handed down in the sad case of Megan Meier, the girl who committed suicide after receiving upsetting MySpace messages from someone she perceived to be her boyfriend. It was later determined the boy, Josh Evans, was a fictitious identity created by a neighbor of Meier's family. Lori Drew, of a St. Louis suburb, has been charged with 'one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.' Interestingly, despite the alleged crime having occurred strictly in Missouri, the case was investigated by the FBI's St. Louis and Los Angeles field offices, and the trial will be held in Los Angeles, home of MySpace's servers. Wired is running a related story about the potentially 'scary' precedent this case could set."

"Emotional Distress"

[Reasonable Radical]

If you can get punished for inflicting emotional distress, I guess Vista really was illegal...

Re:Layoffs == murder?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't do it. Sooner or later another job will open up for you. I realize opportunities for midget accordion-playing clowns are limited, but there must be some.

Re:Back To Reality

[j_166]

"It takes a village, and when that village fails it needs to be prosecuted."

And preferably burned to the ground, as an example to all the other villages.

Re:The larger truth

[tjstork]

How do you defend yourself against a woman who's beating you with pots and pans, brooms and the like?

Take the pots and pans ands brooms away from her, and tell her to quit breaking all the stuff because she's got a lot of cooking and cleaning to do.

Re:And the wisest comment

[Oktober Sunset]

Don't worry, he'll soon learn the ways and be spouting brain-dead soviet Russia joke soon enough.

Re:"Emotional Distress"

[spazdor]

don't you worry. the MySpace AUP provides for all that.