No doubt most of you are aware of the recent decision in the Lori Drew case. I’ll summarize the case briefly:
- Lori Drew is a 49 year-old mother of a 13 year-old daughter, Sarah.
- Lori, Sarah, and a family friend conspired to create a MySpace account under the fake identity ‘Josh Evans.’
- They then used the MySpace account to communicate with a girl that Sarah hated - Megan Meier. They convinced her that this fake person, Josh Evans, was a fantastic boy and that he was very interested in her romantically, etc etc. Megan became extremely smitten with Josh.
- After a few weeks of this, Lori (as the fake Josh Evans) sent Megan a message telling Megan that the “world would be a better place without you.”
- Megan then committed suicide, telling “Josh” that “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over.”
- Prosecutors in Missouri, Megan and Lori’s home state, declined to file charges against Lori since they couldn’t find any laws she’d broken.
- In a move deemed highly unusual, federal prosecutors in California filed suit against Lori instead, on the grounds that the MySpace servers are located in California and thus they have jurisdiction.
- Lori was charged with multiple felonies, and was found innocent of the most serious one (conspiracy). The jury found her guilty on three counts relating to computer fraud (ie creating a fake identity), but reduced the felonies to misdemeanors. She could face up to 3 years in prison and a $300k in fines.
Now, there’s no doubt that Lori Drew is a loathsome, petty human being who deserves to be shunned, but I don’t believe she should have faced criminal charges for her acts or been convicted of computer fraud. This article in GigaOm sums up my objections well, and they boil down to a couple of ideas:
- A corporation’s terms of service should not be conflated with criminal law. The idea that someone can be charged with criminal actions for breaking the terms of service of MySpace is fairly outrageous. At best, a civil action by MySpace is appropriate as it was their ‘contract’ that Lori Drew broke by creating a fake identity on its service. Remember: Lori was not convicted of contributing to Megan’s suicide. She was convicted purely for creating a fake identity that violated MySpace’s terms of service.
- We must, must, must preserve the ability to operate anonymously on the internet. Hell, security experts regularly advise that children, in particular, lie about their personal details when registering on sites like MySpace. The verdict in this case seems to be telling us that anyone who lies about personal details when registering on any internet site that’s hosted in the US is guilty of a federal crime. I’d be surprised to find out that there’s a single person reading this blog who hasn’t falsified personal info during registration on one or more sites.
How does this relate to MMOs? Well, many/most MMO publishers would, from one angle, love be able to force their users to truthfully hand over their personal info when registering. If nothing else, it’d make linking the accounts of gold farmers and spammers together (and then banning them) much easier (though given that most of those are not from the US, this decision wouldn’t really have much practical effect). I’m also sure a lot of MMO players out there quiver in joy at the thought of another weapon (however ultimately ineffective) for the publisher of their favorite MMO to use against the spammers/farmers.
But seriously….do we really want federal charges being thrown at someone merely for violating the terms of service of an MMO, social network, or other site? Remember when you signed up for that extra gmail account and failed to provide your real details? Or when you were multi-boxing on WoW using your wife’s name and credit card? Welcome to your new life as a criminal!
Of course, it’s fair to assume that Lori wouldn’t have been charged with computer fraud had the case not been connected to Megan’s suicide. I doubt anyone reading this is using his/her falsely-registered Gmail account to break the heart of a little girl, but remember: Lori’s conviction doesn’t have anything directly to do with the suicide. She was convicted only on charges relating to computer fraud and violating the MySpace ToS - something every single person who ever provides false details when registering on MySpace (or almost any other site/service) does.
I don’t believe that what Lori did was a crime and I believe the decision should (and hopefully will) be overturned, regardless of how awful an individual Lori is.
12 comments
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November 29th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Brask Mumei
Reading the comments on that article depresses me more than the ruling. Is reading comprehension really that universally bad?
If I design a reading comprehension test I think I’ll include some strong emotional component - it seems as soon as people latched on to “instigator but should not be charged” a red film covered their eyes and they lost all ability to read the surrounding text as to clues for this position.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Matt Mihaly
Yeah, it’s pretty depressing how completely most of the commenters in that thread miss the point entirely. People like that are an excellent argument against direct-vote referendums, as they’re unable to see beyond their rage to the larger issues.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Zell
The actual conviction in question is obviously very questionable. But, as an amateur, I had nevertheless gained the impression that it’s relatively common practice to abuse semi-irrelevant laws in precisely this way, in cases that deal with matters where legislation and precedence is thin?
So I while I would assume that this will go to higher courts and its finer points clarified, I’m not sure there’s been any terrible injury to the legal system. And since it is quite clear to me that morally speaking Lori is in fact guilty of a crime (if not directly responsible for the girl’s death), I guess I’m going to have to join the ranks of the people who shrug this off as clearly a legal hack, but one that still feels better than an acquittal.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Matt Mihaly
I think there’s a real problem in using semi-irrelevant laws to prosecute someone in place of a prosecution for something more real. I think there’s even more of a problem when semi-irrelevant laws are greatly expanded to criminalize breaking a company’s ToS.
The justice system should be about prosecuting people based on reasonable interpretations of the law, not based on extra-legal moral condemnation. Once you open the door to the legitimacy of the latter you’re on a fairly slippery slope. Imagine a prosecutor feeling that it’s quite clear to him “morally speaking” that homosexuality is wrong, and going after homosexuals who aren’t out of the closet for lying about their identity on a dating site in order to preserve their anonymity? That’s no different than what Lori got convicted of, after all.
–matt
December 1st, 2008 at 8:53 am
Martha
Unfortunately morality and juris prudence are too often confused - you’ve highlighted this before Matt. It is as you say, too easy to look at the individual case while ignoring the larger question.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:05 am
wowpanda
At first I agree with you, but after think it over, I think it is more complicated.
If Lori insulted the girl and she committed suicide, it not Lori’s fault.
However in this case Lori did that through deception. That is different.
Imagine if your mutual fund manager tricked you into buying junk funds, or maybe your fund manager figured out a way to drain huge amount of money out of the fund to his personal bank account through some hole in the legal system.
Morality is the base of legal systems, and there are a common set of it which are shared by all humanity. That is why there are murder and manslaughter, treated differently even though the consequences are the same. The big problem is sometimes morality got narrowed down and people used it based on their personal likes and dislikes.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:12 am
wowpanda
crap I flipped. Now I think you are right. I should restraint myself from posting before I flip again.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:34 am
Matt
The issue isn’t about “fault”. Lori wasn’t convicted of anything directly related to the suicide of the girl. She was convicted of types of computer fraud for creating a fake identity.
Morality is the basis, sometimes, for legal systems, but morality differs from person to person which is exactly why we have legal systems - so that there’s a single referee about what will land you in jail.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
wowpanda
Suicide cases are always a mess. If Lori scared the girl and caused a heart attack, that is manslaughter. But in this case the girl committed suicide. There must be something rather big for her to do that, for this reason you can even argue that what Lori did is cruel and unusual punishment…..
Of course from libertarian point of view, no money is extorted, no physical force is used and it is just a price to pay for growing up (I am one mean libertarian). My previous comparison is bad and I now agree with you 100%.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:33 pm
John Szeder
Wait. You don’t think she committed a crime of any sort?
I am torn on the issue.
On one hand parent’s need to be responsible for their children’s online activities and I believe that you cannot go around chasing “heavy metal” or “video games” or similar bad guys for teen suicides.
On the other hand, they were doing something cruel and unusual to this girl, and if they had not done so this girl would still be alive today. That fact doesn’t sit well with me.
I have thought about it a while and concluded that the body of law today has not quite come up with an intelligent means of trying something like this in the courts of law. There is probably good enough evidence for a civil suit brought by the parents against the offending individuals, but it seems like the criminal justice system itself should have *something* for a case like this.
I think we can all agree that justice was not served well in the charge that was issued and judgement that was rendered.
I do think she committed a crime because their actions strike me as willful and resulted in someone’s death.
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:02 am
Brask Mumei
Cruel, yes. Superficially, it doesn’t seem that unusual. You people do remember high school, don’t you?
I don’t like this case as it tried to make “virtual bullying” somehow different than “bullying”. The law shouldn’t care about the mechanics of the bullying - if she had dressed up like a teenage boy, would she be in the clear because there’s no TOS on the clothes she wore? If the MySpace TOS didn’t have a “Don’t bully people” clause would her action then be a-okay?
To me, the question of whether and what punishment she receives should not be contingent on the TOS of myspace.
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:29 am
John Szeder
I don’t remember people’s mothers getting in on it. That to me constitutes unusual.
I am also unsure how you classify this as bullying. She was emotionally manipulated into ending her life by someone she was starting to build a relationship with, even if it was a virtual one. Had it been a real boy who was pretending to do this then telling her she should end her life and it was recorded in some manner, I am sure there would be a deeper investigation into whether or not this constitutes involuntary manslaughter or cruel and unusual punishment.
This is not about the mechanics of it, this is about the fact that a girl is dead and there was a group of individuals including a grown adult that contributed materially to that death. I don’t want to blame the victim here too much but sure she could have used better judgement in building a trust relationship with a stranger in an anonymous environement. But at the same time, there was a deceitful mind on the other end who I believe had a responsibility to curb the deception here rather than contribute to it.
I agree that the case should not be tried on the TOS of MySpace. I also believe the mother is a reprehensible person and that the justice system does not have mechanisms in place today to put this before a jury of her peers to determine the correct outcome in the courts of law.