Indictments were filed yesterday in the Megan Meier case. For those of you unfamiliar with the case, you can read the story here. In short, Megan Meier was the 13-year-old from Missouri who committed suicide after being cyberbullied on MySpace. To make matters worse, the offender was a fictitious 16-year-old boy who was created by the mother of one of Megan’s friends. Megan’s mother, Tina, has become an instant cyberbullying activist, appearing on many national news programs lobbying for cyberbullying legislation.While I feel those responsible for Megan’s untimely death need to be punished, I’m not sure the current indictments are the best approach. Our reading of the indictment suggests that Lori Drew, the mother allegedly responsible for the harassment, is being charged with violating MySpace’s terms of service which prohibits “promoting conduct that was abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory, or libelous.” So she is essentially being criminally charged (in federal court) for committing (and conspiring to commit) a civil crime (a “tortious” act).
This indictment really speaks to the problem facing cyberbullying advocates. The problem is that there are no good, clear laws that govern this behavior. If society feels as though those who cyberbully should be held criminally responsible, then legislators should get to work on creating the legislation. Because they have largely failed to do so, special prosecutors, and in this case federal prosecutors, are forced to shoe-horn cyberbullying cases into existing legislation. Many states have recently passed laws concerning cyberbullying – but they all simply direct school districts to deal with it. Instead of providing meaningful direction to educators, parents, and prosecutors, the laws merely require school districts to update their harassment policies to include electronic variants. But again, they stop short of giving specific directions.
I’m not advocating here that we should criminalize cyberbullying. The vast majority of cyberbullying cases can usually be most effectively dealt with informally by parents, with the help of others (educators, school counselors, maybe even local law enforcement). In the rare case that cyberbullying behaviors result in significant harm and/or death, however, well then those responsible need to be held accountable. The real question is whether the indictments filed yesterday will hold up. Any thoughts? How about from our two resident lawyers?
3 comments:
I completely agree. Laws by themselves are not going to stem the tide of this problem. Alone, I just can’t see the deterrent effect. They are, however, important components of a comprehensive prevention and response approach to cyberbullying (which involves so much more).
I am really curious to see whether the hacking-related laws they are citing will be found applicable to the simple Content Provider Terms of Service violations of Lori Drew and her conspirators on MySpace.
Thanks for posting this, Patch.
As I shared with you the other night, I agree that indictment may not be the best way to proceed here. What she did was reprehensible, but I wonder if charges would have been brought had Megan not committed suicide. What a sad, sad story.
By the way, I know that you and Pap are too modest to say this, so I'll say it for you: folks interested in learning more about responses to cyberbullying soon will have a fabulous resource at their disposal: Pap & Patch's first book on the subject!! : )
Putting aside thoughts about whether this is an appropriate method of redressing the wrong here, it seems that the indictment is within the bounds of the statute. The statute makes criminal the act of (a) intentionally accessing a computer (b) without authorization, or exceeding the authorization, and (c) thereby obtaining information from any protected computer (d) if the conduct involved interstate commerce. The statute defines many, but not all, of the terms in that prior sentence (for example, it doesn’t define intentional). Most of the definitions are common sense—it doesn’t take a statutory whiz to understand what “obtaining information” means. The one term that raised a red flag to me was “protected computer”, but the legislature painted that one with a very broad brush by defining it as a computer used in interstate commerce. Seems to me that would include every single computer that is plugged into the internet.
Applying the facts to the law shows that you (a) have interstate commerce (Missouri woman accesses California server); (b) intentional access (she set up the account and intentionally sought access to MySpace’s servers); (c) action beyond the authorization provided by MySpace (she pretty clearly violated the MySpace Terms of Service); and (d) information obtained from a protected computer (she obtained information about the victim through MySpace servers that are used in interstate commerce).
So, it appears that they aren’t really shoe-horning this one in. Rather, they have used what is admittedly an incredibly broad statute to prosecute an act that probably was not contemplated when this statute was enacted. Typically this act is used to prosecute spammers, online porn rings, etc…. In doing some quick research, I came across this case. Typical Phillies fan, I guess. Certainly isn’t behavior you would see from Tigers or Cards fans.
My personal opinion is that this case is more appropriately handled through a civil action where the girl’s family would not have much problem showing negligence, at minimum. But, as one of my profs used to say, “the sign on the building says ‘College of Law’ not ‘College of Feelings’”.
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