Lori Drew Cyberbullying Case Dismissed 408
Trepidity writes "About seven weeks after the judge tentatively overturned Lori Drew's guilty verdict for 'cyberbullying' following her online harassment of a teenager that was linked to the teenager's suicide, the case was finally officially dismissed. In a 32-page opinion (PDF), the court avoided a minefield of possible follow-on effects that civil-liberties groups had warned of by holding that merely violating a website's Terms of Service cannot constitute 'unauthorized access' for the purposes of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. 1030)."
Re:great (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this like shouting 'fire' in a theatre? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, no; there is no such thing as "simply speech." There are plenty of things that you can write on the internet or issue from your mouth that should rightfully result in you being imprisoned. Such as shouting fire in a crowded theatre.
Or:
1. purposefully playing with the emotions of one specific child (not general rants on the internet)
2. a child she knows to have psychologically problems
3. over an extended period of time
4. directly suggesting suicide after manipulating, setting up, and torturing this child
That's not "simply speech". not REMOTELY "simply speech". This is nothing like me calling Rob Malda a douchebag or advocating for greater acceptance of necrophilia or defending the Baptist church or anything else that someone might object to but is obviously free speech. there are lots of free speech that are odious but not criminal.
This does not consider how complicated the interplay between your rights and your responsibilities are in this world. No, you do not get automatic protection from the consequences of EVERYTHING you can possibly say
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
Drew should sue them for mental distress and seek a multi-million dollar award.
Mental distress you say? Like the kind Meier was under? In that case, surely the prosecutor should be tried by a federal court. It would only be fair.
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
The right thing for Drew to do in this case is to sue the government and, specifically, the lead prosecuting attorney. Drew should sue them for mental distress and seek a multi-million dollar award.
This is true. I want the USA to be seen as the country which lets a murderer(*) go free then allows her to sue the government and win millions.
(*) The US has this quasi-religious fallacy that the mind is somehow less a biological entity than the body, so while we are limited by physical disability/limitation/programming, mental disability/limitation/programming somehow doesn't exist because it runs contrary to the philosophy about man running as a free rational entity. On the contrary, the mind is just another biological function, and driving someone to suicide (i.e. by manipulating their mind until they think of death as the only way out) is as much murdering them as pushing them onto a sword.
On to the civil case (Score:4, Insightful)
Sue that witch into the ground, take every asset she owns.
It may not bring megan back but if it discourages some other jerk from doing the same thing it will be worth it.
Does Ms. Drew deserve to go to jail? (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC, Ms. Drew, family, and an employee went to elaborate lengths to ensnare a susceptible and troubled teenager in a web of lies, followed by making very pointed suggestions for the teenager to commit suicide. What legal basis to prosecute her under is one question... but if the allegations are true, there is certainly a moral basis for ostracizing her, which is apparently what happened in her community.
Re:I really hope I misread this article, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
The world is a bad and cruel place. Everyone needs to learn that at some point.
The law and police protect civilization as a whole, not the individual. As such, as an individual, injustice may be done to without anything happening.
It's just how the world works.
Re:Silly question? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would only be hacking if she was banned and then evaded.
If that were the case I'd be more inclined to go after her for unauthorized access.
Re:great (Score:1, Insightful)
So just what is 'harassment' then?
Is it harrassment if I call you an asshole?
How about if I make a point of calling you an asshole every time I see you?
What if I stand outside your house yelling "asshole!" for a whole afternoon?
Can I get away with telling all your friends and family that you're an asshole?
Is it harrassment if I put up posters with your name and the word 'asshole' on all round the neighborhood?
Where is the line drawn? Maybe it should be for a jury to decide.
Re:great (Score:5, Insightful)
So an adult posting as a child having intimate and/or sexual conversations with a child in order to later manipulate and ridicule them is merely "being mean"? If Lori Drew were a man, she'd be thrown away in prison for life for for being a sexual predator engaging in sexual conversations with a twelve year old girl online.
Her actions and intentions (and the results) could reasonably (in spirit, though certainly not law) be seen as manslaughter. Adults have measures they can take, legally, to retaliate against harassment and various forms of emotional and verbal abuse, but if you're a twelve year old little girl you should "just toughen the fuck up"?
The problem here is that this woman is a petty, vile, remorseless cunt (an applicable use of that word in this case which nobody can deny) that did a despicable thing that absolutely contributed significantly to the death of a child. Because the case was so mishandled (there are already laws which should have allowed certain prosecution without the ridiculous liberty-curtailing precedents involved here), the only way to make sure she gets what she deserves is to put the civil liberties of every person in the country in peril.
There is no great outcome either way in this case.
Harrasment (Score:5, Insightful)
Can somebody explain precisely why this woman was not prosecuted under charges of harassment, mental abuse or similar ? Did some lawyer screw up, is the prosecution being twats or is the law just so weird that deliberately trying to hurt somebody by lying to them with the specific intention to cause harm is not criminal?
Don't get me wrong, charging her for violating a ToS was bullshit, but I just don't see why what she did would not be a violation of at least some other law. Libel, slander and bashing ethnic minorities is illegal, so why is deliberately trying to hurt a minor through carefully targeted verbal abuse, lies and harassment not? That it happened over the Internet is surely tangential to the real issue here, which is that a very cruel woman set out to mentally abuse a child.
Re:Silly question? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
The government chose to use the legal system to make her life a living hell.
The right thing for Drew to do in this case is to sue the government and, specifically, the lead prosecuting attorney. Drew should sue them for mental distress and seek a multi-million dollar award.
Oh, poor, poor lady. Maybe she should hang herself. After all, she's shown *so* much remorse (*eyeroll*) for her actions.
If there was ever a case of harassment that justified some sort of prosecution, it's this one. For fuck's sake, the woman is -- at the very least -- a sexual predator. Posing as an underage boy to have sexual conversations with a twelve year old girl? What the fuck?! Not to mention adding on the intent to cause serious detriment by the machinations of her contrived plot to the girl.
She deserves everything she gets coming to her in a negative fashion. She and her family haven't even shown the slightest bit of remorse over what they did. Fuck them.
The only distressing thing here is that in order for her to get what she deserves, the liberties of everybody in this country have to be put in jeopardy. So to avoid setting such precedents, we have to smile and nod and say "sure, she clearly contributed to this girl killing herself, but she gets to continue being a free useless member of society pursuing her own happiness, because prosecutors couldn't come up with something more applicable than TOS violations.
All outcomes in this are miserable, in some way. Even the right one, which it seems won-out.
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
The public was of the opinion that Drew organized a conspiracy to commit petty fraud that indirectly resulted in a death (i.e. manslaughter). Organizing a conspiracy to commit a felony is a crime.
I agree she didn't violate federal law. Missouri should have handled this.
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:2, Insightful)
The idea of punishment and responsibility for crimes rests on the assumption that man is a free rational entity.
This is another silly mistake of US philosophy:
(1) We've had criminal justice systems for much longer than people thought of man this way - they've been justified on anything from Divine Right to "well, I have a bigger stick than you";
(2) Actually, what a criminal justice system does is:
(i) Physically stop criminals from doing the same thing again for a certain amount of time;
(ii) Discourage minds from telling their bodies to perform acts considered criminal, in the knowledge that they'll be restricted if they are caught.
Criminal justice systems enable society to flourish in certain ways by restricting certain sorts of behaviour. You don't need to say that individuals are "responsible" for their behaviour for this to work.
As for the "punishment" argument, there are two angles to this:
(i) The idea of revenge as justice. This is just silly, but unfortunately the above fallacy is sometimes used to conclude it as correct;
(ii) Punishment as a way of conditioning the mind to stop behaving in a certain way. This sometimes works, but usually doesn't, whence recidivism.
If you do away with that, how can you hold Lori Drew responsible for driving someone to suicide?
You don't ever need to. You merely need to establish the best way to stop her from doing it again: being locked up, psych treatment, whatever.
After all, she has no control over the biological functions of her mind, right?
Who cares? All your arguments rest on the same fallacy.
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
People who go around saying that a twelve year old girl should just "toughen up" really piss me off. Even if her attackers and harassers were her own age, it could be brutal and destructive, but in this case the harassers included a group of adults conspiring against her to cause her harm. That has to count for something. It's bullshit to say that a child should just "toughen up" against the orchestrated attacks and manipulations of full grown fucking adults.
If you're a balanced normal adult, you should be able to take a lot of crap and let it roll off your back. But there would certainly be legal consequences if, say, your spouse had serious mental and emotional problems that they were being treat\ed for and you went out of your way to orchestrate their mental torture and abuse and took advantage of their unbalanced state (hell, in many places, you can't take advantage of someone simply in a drunk state and there are protections for consumers who make large purchases and think otherwise within 72 hours!).
And yet... when it comes to a twelve year old girl... she's somehow supposed to be a solid fucking stoic rock. Not only against other children, but fucking adults three or four times her age. Lori Drew reminds me of that movie where the guys pretend to like that girl, but really it's all a game they're playing to make her feel loved and wanted and then they all drop her like a rock on the same day to see if they can collectively drive her to suicide. Except the guy who did that here wasn't a 17 year old boy but a 30-something year old woman and her family.
I'm not saying that we should put in peril every American's rights here just to prosecute this one insignificant twat. I guess considering what the prosecutors were trying her on, the judge did the only right thing that could be done. But that doesn't make the outcome any more pleasant. Justice for all had to trump over justice for one dead kid. And even though it was probably right... it still fucking sucks.
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:3, Insightful)
RE: recidivism, it doesn't really help that the best place to learn how to commit crimes is jail. You just stick a few hundred criminals in a big courtyard, what the hell else do you think they're gonna talk about?
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:4, Insightful)
No, she's not meant to be solid as a rock, she's meant to have an emotional support system in place, in the form of her parents, her peers, and her teachers (but most especially her parents). If her parents were not giving her this kind of emotional support then I would be perfectly happy for that to be classed as criminal negligence or wilful neglect, but in the media-powered US judicial system you can't go after the parents. If a child is so emotionally fragile that she can be talked into suicide by someone she has never met face to face, her parents are failing in their duty. If a twelve-year-old is allowed to develop close relationships with people she know knows online without being educated that people online often lie or misrepresent themselves, then her parents are failing in their responsibility.
Re:I really hope I misread this article, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
The right thing for Drew to do is shut the fuck up, be grateful for a loophole in the law, change her name, and move far away. If I were that girl's parent, I would spend the rest of my life looking for revenge.
Re:great (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:2, Insightful)
sudo mod theraven64 up.
Having lived through an abused childhood, I have near zero sympathy for kids who are such losers that they can't face life's challenges. Not quite zero, but near it. This girl who committed suicide because some boy she had never met apparently turned on her isn't very far up the food chain from the idiots who choose to "go out in a blaze of glory" while shooting up their school. She was weak and unstable, and she chose to suicide. Her lack of a support group contributed, yes, but the fact remains, she failed.
I've seen someone's sig - "Instead of child proofing the world, let's world proof the child!" Damned good advice - I just can't remember where I've seen the sig.
Re:great (Score:4, Insightful)
No the same way that if you push someone you don't go to jail for murder; while if you push them in front of a train you do. The 19 year old did far more than just tell someone something mean. She spent hours developing a close emotional connection with a child (not a peer) prior to telling them to kill themselves.
Re:Isn't this like shouting 'fire' in a theatre? (Score:5, Insightful)
"This is nothing like me calling Rob Malda a douchebag "
And, you're a fucking psychologist, right? You know for certain that Rob Malda is rock stable, that he has never once considered suicide, right? That one more fucking douchebag won't push him over the edge with one more idiot insult? And, because you are a professional psychologist, your insult doesn't imply the same responsibility as some redneck bitch in Missouri improperly getting involved in her daughter's love life - or the life of her daughter's peers.
Get a grip on reality. If Malda suicides after you call him a douchebag, you are just about as responsible as the redneck bitch in Missouri.
We should all be grateful that this particular case has been thrown out. Very few of us on slashdot use our proper names - obviously putting us into the same class of predator as Lori Drew - at least in the mind of an overzealous prosecutor who doesn't like what we might have to say.
Once again, I remind people that the proper course of action in this case would have been CIVIL, not criminal. We don't need more criminal law on the books, there is already enough to make criminals of all of us. We especially don't need criminal law that threatens free speech.
Re:great (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? No one said she should be charged with murder (which is what would happen if she were held responsible for what the girl did to herself). But she is still responsible for the direct consequences of her actions.
Even if the girl didn't end up committing suicide from the psychological harm that women inflicted upon her (with clear malicious intent), an adult should still not be allowed to bully a child without legal consequences. Heck, disciplinary actions are even taken on a 1st or 2nd grader who picks on another kid at school, so why would an adult doing much more harm to a child be given a free ride?
Re:Unfortunate neccesity (Score:3, Insightful)
She didn't violate the TOS she used a stolen account and password. Just because the person she stole them from was a figment of her imagination doesn't change a thing, She logged in with someone else's password. Thats the definition of unauthorized access.
Re:Isn't this like shouting 'fire' in a theatre? (Score:0, Insightful)
I think you are exaggerating. Lynching (including non racial) was an American tradition for two centuries until it got exclusively tied with the Klan and the Klan was discredited. Not a good feature but we were still a free society as long as you were in the mob and not targeted by it.
Fixed that for you.
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:4, Insightful)
Having lived through an abused childhood, I have near zero sympathy for kids who are such losers that they can't face life's challenges.
I say that people are born with and develop (mostly in very early life) different physical and mental abilities for handling tough circumstances. If you believe that everyone has the potential to act as you did in response to your abuse, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of biology and psychology, and are taking refuge in a non-scientific philosophy. What is more, no two difficult situations are the same, with details being the difference between a seemingly insurmountable and a "merely" challenging situation.
I'm sorry you were abused. Because you chose to reveal this, I ask you please not to turn your unresolved anger into thinly veiled justification for the abuse of others.
What this decision was really about (Score:5, Insightful)
First, Judge Wu's decision has nothing to do with whether Drew's actions constituted "cyberbullying" or whether she deserved to be prosecuted for her ill-treatment of Megan. All of that was decided long ago, first in Missouri, where the AG said Drew had violated no existing statute, nor in the Federal prosecution where the jury refused to treat Drew's actions as felonious.
What was left to determine was whether Drew's act of creating a fictitious identity at MySpace, in contravention of its Terms of Service, constituted a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). When Congress passed this law its intent was to criminalize activities like hacking into computers at banks or military contractors. After public outcry at the fact Drew was not convicted of anything for her actions, Justice Department attorneys in California (where the MySpace computers were housed) prosecuted Drew for violating the CFAA.
Judge Wu's decision is extremely cautious and proscribed in many ways. First, he specifically states that an "intentional" breach of a website's Terms of Service may come under the purview of the CFAA:
What's really at issue is whether someone can be prosecuted for violating the TOS, or whether MySpace's specific TOS were too vague to provide reasonable grounds for criminal prosecution. "Vagueness" in this case means whether "individuals of 'common intelligence' are on notice that a breach of the terms of service contract can become a crime under the CFAA." His ruling rejects the Justice Department's case on the grounds that the MySpace TOS are simply too vague to provide a basis for prosecution. In particular, he ruled that the TOS were so expansive that a wide variety of behaviors would become criminalized (lying about one's age or weight, for instance):
My guess is that attorneys for popular websites, particularly social networking sites, will be revising their TOS to comply with Wu's decision.
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
A shrink speaks.
I'm not a shrink; I'm a mathematician, if you care to know. But you seem to have issues with shrinks, looking at all your posts in this thread. Why?
Where did I justify anyone abusing anyone else?
"I have near zero sympathy for kids who are such losers that they can't face life's challenges [abuse?]. Not quite zero, but near it. This girl who committed suicide because some boy she had never met apparently turned on her isn't very far up the food chain from [murderers] the idiots who choose to "go out in a blaze of glory" while shooting up their school. She was weak and unstable, and she chose to suicide. Her lack of a support group contributed, yes, but the fact remains, she failed."
Your rhetoric is an exemplar for how to de-humanise someone as a precursor to justification for maltreatment. They're only retards, they're only Catholics, they're only gypsies, they're only Jews, they're only weak. Each post you make here lifts more of the mask over the anger you're feeling in relation to your abuse.
This doesn't change the fact that the weak succumb, and the strong fight.
But those consequences aren't mutually exclusive, are they? The strong fight, yet sometimes they succumb too. You'd succumb to a sufficiently mentally and/or physically stronger oppressor. So would I. So would anyone. Fortunately, neither you nor I have encountered such a person yet. But if you did, I wouldn't dismiss you after your death as a sub-human weakling. Would you do the same to me?
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:1, Insightful)
Have you read your link? First of all, it doesn't apply since it's discussing negligence claims that cause injuries to employees. Furthermore, it says that all you have to do is file a complaint with the offending agency. If the agency denies you, then you have a right to file a lawsuit within 6 months. No permission necessary from congress.
I seriously doubt there's anything stopping someone from suing the prosecutor's office for malicious prosecution. She'll probably lose unless there's compelling evidence, but that's another story. How many civil rights cases involve suing the police or prosecutor's - congress definitely would not have been involved in any part of that process except passing laws after-the fact if they wished to.
Re:great (Score:3, Insightful)
Criminal responsibility? Sorry. If I call you a flaming homosexual moron, and you go commit suicide, I've not committed a criminal act. Of course, that goes both ways - if you call ME the same thing, and I commit suicide, you aren't criminally liable either.
If you call me a "flaming homosexual moron", you have no idea of what my mental state is. You don't know me. I am a complete stranger. However, this case didn't involve complete strangers. This case involved an adult who had some knowledge of the mental state of her victim. This involved a case of an adult who went out of her way to cultivate a lie; create the deception of a personal relationship with the girl. This adult set up an emotional unstable teenager to be her most vulnerable. And then that adult let loose with an insult that would take the most advantage and do the most damage in this crafted situation.
This is not a case of flaming on an Internet forum. This is not heated words or throw-away insults. This was something far beyond the pale of what you're describing.
Re:Isn't this like shouting 'fire' in a theatre? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know for certain that Rob Malda is rock stable, that he has never once considered suicide, right? That one more fucking douchebag won't push him over the edge with one more idiot insult? And, because you are a professional psychologist, your insult doesn't imply the same responsibility as some redneck bitch in Missouri improperly getting involved in her daughter's love life - or the life of her daughter's peers.
If you can't tell the difference between a one-sentence insult about a person that you don't personally know and a prolonged, methodical plan to inflict mental damage on a 12-year-old girl that you know well enough to be aware of her existing psychological problems, then you have no credibility in this discussion.
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So what about nooses? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you hang a noose in front of the house of a black person, and it hurts their feelings, should you be charged and go to prison?
I think a much better question is, "Why are you (and lots of others, apparently) so interested in getting away with being a mean-spirited shit to people most likely to suffer real emotional hurt from it under the guise of 'freedom of speech'?"
Whatever happened to the notion that others' feelings ought to matter to us as much as our own?
Re:Fighting Abuse of Power (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the stupid prosecutor's fault, there were plenty of more viable angles that wouldn't endanger everyone's rights, they just wanted to use this one to fluff up their careers. For example, suicide is a crime (odd but true) and she contributed to a minor's decision to commit that crime. Therefor she should be tried for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She deliberately inflicted an emotional damage on a child, so assault. She is a mother who has demonstrated that she doesn't have sufficient emotional maturity to behave responsibly. Perhaps social services should look in to that.
But NO, the prosecutors were determined to grab some headlines and make it a "cybercrime" for their own benefit and so she goes free.
Re:That is ridiculous though. (Score:3, Insightful)
You cannot talk a person into doing something they truly don't want to do.
Sure you can. It's called "charisma." And anyway, you don't talk them into doing something they don't want to do. You convince them that they want to do it.
Re:great (Score:4, Insightful)
If I told you to jump in a river, would you do it?