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EARTHDATE: July 5, 2009

Official News page 6


REAL LIFE NEWS: MYSPACE SUICIDE CASE CONVICTION OVERTURNED

by Hazed

In news that reverses a very dangerous precedent, a federal judge has overturned the convictions against a mother who was accused of using MySpace to bully a 13-year old girl, who subsequently committed suicide.

In the dock was Lori Drew, 50 years old. She was accused of participating in a hoax on MySpace, the purpose of which was to try to find out if a young neighbor, Megan Meier, was spreading malicious gossip about Drew's daughter. She posed as a boy called Josh, using a fake photo of a sandy-haired teenager, and over a few months befriended Megan on MySpace. Eventually, "Josh" sent Megan a message telling her that the world would be better without her.

A few hours later, Megan hanged herself.

This was clearly vile behavior on the part of Lori Drew, and there's no doubt her deception was the cause of Megan's tragic suicide. But the decision of prosecutors to take her to court, and the jury to convict her, was shocking. She was charged with four felony counts because in creating the fake MySpace profile, she was violating the site's terms of service. She was sentenced to three years in prison and a big fine.

Now that judgment has been overturned. US District Judge George Wu acquitted her on the grounds that if the case had allowed to stand, it could have made criminals out of anyone who has ever entered a false email address, or given any other false details, when registering for an online service.

Quite right too. What Drew was really convicted of was being very unpleasant - which isn't against the law and shouldn't be. There's no doubt that what she did was despicable, and it had tragic consequences, and as such she deserves to be punished socially - ostracized by her local community, perhaps - but the law and the state has no business getting involved.


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