Pundits across the globe are trying to understand what the Lori Drew convictions really mean. Some say it sends a strong message to cyberbullies while others believe it's an unenforceable standard for user agreements to become legal weapons.
The summary is this: Lori Drew, the mother who was accused of using a fake MySpace account and posing as a cute, 16 year old boy named "Josh", was convicted of 3 misdemeanor charges of using a computer to illegally gain information from another. The victim was a 13 year old Missouri girl named Megan Meier who after being cruelly abused on the MySpace page committed suicide.
Drew was not convicted of the fourth count, the most serious one, of conspiracy. On this count, the jury couldn't decide and the judge declared a mistrial. Drew faces possible jail time and fines of up to 3 years and $300,000.
The federal prosecutor, Thomas O'Brien, brought the case in California because MySpace is based in Beverly Hills. He pronounced the case the nation's first cyberbullying trial and said the jury's decision sent a worthy message: "If you have children who are on the Internet and you are not watching what they are doing, you better be."
Parry Aftab, founder of the WiredSafety anticyberbullying group and a partner with Megan's mother, Tina in the effort called "Megan's Pledge," says "the verdict has made it very clear if you use the Internet as a weapon to hurt others, especially young, vulnerable teens, you're going to have to answer to a jury. This is not acceptable."
However, most legal experts are interpreting the findings more narrowly, suggesting the real impacted group will be those of us who regularly ignore the User Agreements found on all websites and Internet services. For example, if you read the agreement on the Google.com website, no child should be using the search feature since one must be of legal age to enter into a binding agreement with the firm. Here's the text from the Google Terms of Service:
"You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if (a) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google, or (b) you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of the United States or other countries including the country in which you are resident or from which you use the Services. "
That means every schoolchild in America who is taught to use Google at school is in violation of a legal agreement. What does that mean for the teacher who instructs these students in lawbreaking?
In the NY Times, Brian Stelter took another angle, asking if "lying about one's identity on the Internet is now a crime?" We all remember fondly the New Yorker cartoon featuring dogs using a computer and declaring, "on the Internet no one knows you are dog." But what about we regular humans who tell our children to hide their identity when going on the Internet, never revealing where you live, your age or your gender. We encourage our children to concoct fictional identities in an effort to prevent online strangers from finding them in the real world, as can happen. Will this practice be disallowed? And if age verification strategies as being promoted by the coalition of 49 states' Attorneys General come to fruition, we will perhaps actually have completely different online environments: one for adults who can enter into legal contracts with online sites and services and a smaller number of child-friendly sites where parents will give permission for their children to play.
Over on CNET, a different sort of online fraud was raised as a concern, that of fraud at online dating sites. Chris Soghoian reminds us that if lying online or ignoring website terms of service is a federal hacking crime, then you'd better not be lying about your age, your weight or even your natural hair color at Match.com.