You may be aware of the Lori Drew case. The 49-year-old created a fake MySpace 16-year-old to cyber-bully and terrorize 13-year-old Megan Meier in her Missouri hometown. Meier eventually hung herself. The state could not find a way to charge Drew for her behavior even though most media accounts point to an almost direct impact on the suicide. The feds, however, have a new angle.
By creating a fake name, Drew is being brought up on federal hacking charges. From the AP story:
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.
More to come.
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