Manage updates with the Download AppNovember 25, 2008 6:55 AM PST
Trial ending in MySpace suicide case
Final day includes prosecutors urging jurors to convict Lori Drew on federal computer charges--and her daughter's testimony.
(From The New York Times)
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There is a line somewhere in law where the state needs to reserve itself from becoming an instrument of legislating ordinary behaviour such as would impinge on the freedoms of individuals. I'd expect a nation with the rich libertarian history of the United States to defer to that notion in its body of laws.
As reprehensible as the defendant's alleged conduct was here, it's a bit of a leap to conclude that she alone bears responsibility for the young lady's suicide, even if she played some kind of role in facilitating it. We likely won't see them here, but I'm pretty sure there'll be a whole host of evils created through trying to constrain the social interactions people have online - between consenting adults, if not the larger group of individuals.
Or perhaps we are seeing them here. Can we know what really happened?
That might be true most of the time, but on occasion I do read some. Like the EULA when I put the digital copy of "Resident Evil: Extinction" on my computer. I did not like the part that says Sony can change the agreement with out notifying me. And sometime I'm going to find a way to strip everything from the video file so I no longer have to worry about it. But even when I don't read the EULA, I still understand that anything in it can fully be used against me. Arrogance is not a valid defense against a EULA.
The law itself has to be constitutional for it to be enforceable. A law like this:
"conspiracy and three counts of accessing a computer without authorization via interstate commerce to obtain information to inflict emotional distress. "
is ridiculous. People make stuffs up all the time to inflict "emotional distress." This is especially true on April 1. Another point of contention about the Internet is, people read everything. They never took into consideration the voluntary action they took to read information that are bad to them and decide whether it is reasonable for them to take their life.
If she gets away with this, I hope her neighborhood makes her life a living hell.
humansssss makes a valik point regarding the cinspiracy law. However if one bothers to read the law it can be understood why the prosecution ended up charging the defendant like thus. The law states that by using a computer to create emotional distress, that person has caused emotional distress, which is a criminal crime while potentially engaging in commercial behavior. By engaging in conversation with the victim the defendant implicitly was looking for some material gain (i.e. the victim's death), and therefore was in violation of the law. How plausible that is I don't know but the reasoning behind such a law is plausible.
The situation is a delicate one. You can't prosecute the person for murder. You can't prosecute her for assault. What can you prosecute her for if there is tangible evidence to suggest she did in fact cause that girl to commit suicide? There probably isn't a stature which pertains directly to this kind of issue within MO, as the likelyhood of something as heinous as this would be pretty slim. Odds are, this woman will not go to jail, or if she does, not for very long. The charges are shaky at best, simply because the law she allegedly broke does not apply to this kind of ordeal. That does not make it right, but in reality there isn't much one can do.