Mom indicted in MySpace suicide case

A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted a
Missouri woman for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the
online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who
committed suicide.

Lori
Drew of suburban St. Louis allegedly helped create a false-identity
MySpace account to contact Megan Meier, who thought she was chatting
with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. Josh didn't exist.
Megan
hanged herself at home in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages,
including one stating the world would be better off without her.

Salvador Hernandez, assistant agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, called the case heart-rending.

"The
Internet is a world unto itself. People must know how far they can go
before they must stop. They exploited a young girl's weaknesses,"
Hernandez said. "Whether the defendant could have foreseen the results,
she's responsible for her actions."


She's denied sending messages

Drew
was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing
protected computers without authorization to get information used to
inflict emotional distress on the girl.

Drew has denied creating the account or sending messages to Megan.
U.S.
Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said this was the first time the federal
statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a
social-networking case. It has been used in the past to address
hacking.
"This was a tragedy that did not have to happen," O'Brien said.
Both the girl and MySpace are named as victims in the case, he said.
MySpace
is a subsidiary of Beverly Hills-based Fox Interactive Media Inc.,
which is owned by News Corp. The indictment noted that MySpace computer
servers are located in Los Angeles County.

Due to juvenile privacy rules, the U.S. attorney's office said, the indictment refers to the girl as M.T.M.
FBI agents in St. Louis and Los Angeles investigated the case, Hernandez said.

Each of the four counts carries a maximum
possible penalty of five years in prison. Drew will be arraigned in St.
Louis and then moved to Los Angeles for trial.

Citing terms of MySpace service

The
indictment says MySpace members agree to abide by terms of service that
include, among other things, not promoting information they know to be
false or misleading; soliciting personal information from anyone under
age 18 and not using information gathered from the Web site to "harass,
abuse or harm other people."

Drew and others who were not named conspired
to violate the service terms from about September 2006 to mid-October
that year, according to the indictment. It alleges they registered as a
MySpace member under a phony name and used the account to obtain
information on the girl.

Drew
and her coconspirators "used the information obtained over the MySpace
computer system to torment, harass, humiliate, and embarrass the
juvenile MySpace member," the indictment charged.
After the girl killed herself, Drew and the others deleted the information for the account, the indictment said.
Last
month, an employee of Drew, 19-year-old Ashley Grills, told ABC's "Good
Morning America" she created the false MySpace profile but Drew wrote
some of the messages to Megan.


A joke taken too far

Grills
said Drew suggested talking to Megan via the Internet to find out what
Megan was saying about Drew's daughter, who was a former friend.
Grills also said she wrote the message to
Megan about the world being a better place without her. The message was
supposed to end the online relationship with "Josh" because Grills felt
the joke had gone too far.

"I
was trying to get her angry so she would leave him alone and I could
get rid of the whole MySpace," Grills told the morning show.
Megan's
death was investigated by Missouri authorities, but no state charges
were filed because no laws appeared to apply to the case.

Using a false name is not unusual, but does violates site's Terms of Service



Think twice before you sign up for an online
service using a fake name or e-mail address. You could be committing a
federal crime.

Federal
prosecutors turned to a novel interpretation of computer hacking law to
indict a Missouri mother on charges connected to the suicide of a
13-year-old MySpace user.
Prosecutors
alleged that by helping create a MySpace account in the name of someone
who didn't exist, Lori Drew, 49, violated the News Corp.-owned site's
terms of service and thus illegally accessed protected computers.
Legal experts warned Friday that such an
interpretation could criminalize routine behavior on the Internet.
After all, people regularly create accounts or post information under
aliases for many legitimate reasons, including parody, spam avoidance
and a desire to maintain their anonymity or privacy online or that of a
child.

This new
interpretation also gives a business contract the force of a law:
Violations of a Web site's user agreement could now lead to criminal
sanction, not just civil lawsuits or ejection from a site.
"I
think the danger of applying a statute in this way is that it could
have unintended consequences," said John Palfrey, a Harvard law
professor who leads a MySpace-convened task force on Internet safety.
"An application of a general statute like this might result in chilling a great deal of online speech and other freedom."


Charge: Perpetrating a hoax

Drew, of O'Fallon, Mo., was indicted Thursday on charges of perpetrating a hoax on the popular online hangout MySpace.

Prosecutors
say Drew helped create a fake MySpace account to convince Megan Meier
she was chatting with a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans.
Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006, allegedly after receiving
a dozen or more cruel messages, including one stating the world would
be better off without her.
Drew,
who has denied creating the account or sending messages to Megan, was
indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on one count of
conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without
authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on
the girl.
Prosecutors
argue that to access MySpace's servers, Drew first had to sign up for
the service, which meant providing her name and date of birth and
agreeing to abide by the site's terms of service. Those terms bar false
registration information, solicitation of personal information from
anyone under 18 and use of any information gathered from the Web site
to "harass, abuse, or harm another person."
By
using a fictitious name, among other things, Drew violated MySpace's
terms and thus had no authority to access the MySpace service,
prosecutors charged.
"Clearly
the facts surrounding this matter are awful and very upsetting, and I
certainly understand the instinct of wanting justice to be served,"
Palfrey said. "On the other hand, this complaint is certainly unusual."

Legal challenge planned

Drew's
lawyer, Dean Steward, said Thursday a legal challenge to the charges is
planned. Missouri authorities said they investigated Megan's death, but
filed no charges because no state laws appeared to apply to the case.
Andrew
DeVore, a former federal prosecutor who co-founded a regional computer
crime unit in New York, said Friday the interpretation raises
constitutional issues related to speech and due process — in the latter
case, because it doesn't allow for adequate notice of when using an
alias online is criminal.

Because corporations would end up setting
criminal standards, a completely legal act at one site could be illegal
at another, said DeVore, who has no direct involvement in the case.
"What
clearly is going on is they couldn't find a way to charge it under
traditional criminal law statutes," DeVore said. "The conduct that she
engaged in they correctly concluded wouldn't satisfy the statute.
Clearly they were looking for some other way to bring a charge."