I know almost nothing of social networking sites. Yes, I have a LinkedIn account, but that’s only because I got so many invitations that I finally broke down and responded to one of them. The others – MySpace, Facebook, MyBlogLog, among them – simply have little appeal for me. Besides, I simply don’t have time to mess with them.
It seems that younger people, especially teenagers, flock to them, sometimes with pretty disastrous results. MySpace, one of the largest sites out there, has put limitations on who can participate. Unfortunately, some of those limitations didn’t come quite soon enough for 13-year-old Megan.
In this LA Times story, the community in which Megan lived and died discovered that the law has not kept pace with technology. After an online relationship with an adult neighbor, posing as a teenage boy, ended abruptly, “Megan, who had previously battled depression, committed suicide.”
But after waiting for criminal charges to be filed against [neighbor Lori] Drew, neighbors learned that local and federal prosecutors could not find a statute applicable to the case.
The community, as the article lays out, has taken to the internet itself. Of course, two wrongs don’t make a right. The publishing of private information seems, well, childish. I don’t know what they hope to accomplish by doing it, anyway. From where I sit, the very behavior that they would like to see corrected – cyber bullying – is being engaged in by the supposed “adults” in the community.
At the same time, I can understand their frustration. There has to be a way to make cyber bullies accountable for their actions. If the telecommunications harassment law referenced in the story (more on that here) is insufficient, it’s time for our Congress to step up.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
An absolutely horrible idea to get Congress involved. At best, we’ll end up with a poorly written law that will not do a thing to actually address the issue, yet will still be used to bludgeon some poor test cases in court a few times until everyone realizes how pointless it is.
And speaking of pointless, consider the language of the statute in one of the articles you reference –
The telecommunications statute prohibits anyone from using a telephone or a telecommunications device “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person.” There are so many things wrong with that language, I don’t know where to start. Does disclosure of identity mean your real and full name? So what will bill collectors do? The name of the company? Well, the law seems to be aimed at individuals. What does annoy mean? Would this criminalize push polling?
Lots of problems there.
Finally, Megan’s family can probably seek retribution, if that’s what they want, in a civil suit. I’m not ready to call for Federal criminalization of speech just because it’s conducted over the internet.
But MB, I thought that Section 113 was designed to address this problem?
I’m sorry that I was unclear (and, frankly, I am not current with the state of the law in this area). I should have pointed out Section 113 as precisely the sort of sloppy law that can come of getting Congress involved. I recall the discussion when it was first signed into law, and the sky is falling reaction on the net. And while I’m not aware of any prosecutor that’s taken and run with an overbroad interpretation of it, I suspect that day is coming (because really, isn’t that just a fantastic campaign issue? “I keep your kids safe on the Internet!” (left unsaid, but implied – “So you don’t have to!”)).
And while I’m not familiar with all of the details of the Lori Drew case (nor am I sure I want to be), everything I’ve seen thus far about it makes me think that what she did is reprehensible, but not illegal. And not everything that is reprehensible ought to be illegal.
On Wednesday, October 21st, city officials enacted an ordinance designed to address the public outcry for justice in the Megan Meier tragedy. The six member Board of Aldermen made Internet harassment a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail.
Does this new law provide any justice for Megan? Does this law provide equitable relief for a future victim or actually weaken the current law?
I reject the premise of this new law and believe it completely misses the mark. The reasoning behind this opinion is that city officials have consistently treated this case as an Internet harassment case instead of a child welfare/exploitation case.
Classifying this case a harassment issue completely fails to address the most serious aspects of the methods Lori Drew employed to lead this youth to her demise. The Vice disagrees that harassment was even a factor in this case until just a couple of days before Megan’s death.
Considering this case a harassment issue is incorrect because during the 5 weeks Lori Drew baited and groomed her victim, the attention was NOT unwanted attention. It was not harassment at all. It was invited attention. Megan participated in the conversations willingly because she was lured, manipulated and exploited without her knowledge.
This law willfully sets a precedent that future child exploiters and predators can use to reclassify their cases to harassment issues. In effect, the law enacted to give Megan justice, may make her even more vulnerable. So long as the child victim doesn’t tell the predator to stop, even a harassment charge may not stick with the right circumstances and a good defender.
Every aspect of this case follows the same procedural requirement used to convict a Child Predator. A child was manipulated by an adult. A child was engaged in sexually explicit conversation (as acknowledged by Lori Drew herself). An adult imposed her will on a child by misleading her, using a profile designed to sexually or intimately attract the 13 year old Megan.
Lori then utilized the power she had gained over this child to cause significant distress and endangerment to that child. She even stipulated to many of these activities in the police report she filed shortly after Megan’s death.
We can go on and on here, but the parallels between this case and many other child predator cases that are successfully prosecuted bear striking similarities.
Child Predator laws do not require much more than simply proving that an adult has engaged a minor in sexually explicit conversation. Lori Drew has already stipulated that her conversations with Megan were sometimes sexual for a child Megan’s age.
City officials who continue to ignore this viable, documented admission and continue to address this issue as harassment are intentionally burying their heads in the sand, when the solution is staring them right in the face. Why?
On June 5th, 2006, Governor Matt Blunt signed into law stiff penalties for convicted sex offenders. The Vice believes that officials continually reject a child predator classification of this case in order to keep the penalty of this offense out of this harsher realm.
Opponents of this law are active in defeating this law not by changing it, but by disqualifying cases like Megan’s from ever being heard.
There are several other child exploitation laws on the books. To date, none of them have even been considered by City, State and Federal officials in this case. I’m outraged that a motion was never even filed, so that the case could at least be argued before a judge or jury.
Those satisfied with this response out of Missouri officials need to think through the effect this law will truly have. It quite honestly has the potential to directly undermine Jessica’s law. It quiet easily gives prosecutors a way out of prosecuting child endangerment and child predator cases in the future.
Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing here.
Danny Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com