The MySpace Suicide Case: When Good Verdicts Make Bad Law

The tragic death of 13-year-old Megan Meier, highly publicized in the beginning of this year, has made its way into the courtroom. This should not be surprising, since generally when a child dies, we want someone to blame, and in this case there is someone – Lori Drew (or rather, Lori, her husband, their daughter, and a friend). Megan committed suicide after being rejected by “Josh,” a false persona created on MySpace by the Drews. Their intentions? It’s unclear, but the result was the confusion and heartbreak of an already fragile young girl.

Originally there were no criminal charges filed against the Drews since investigators found that their actions, while cruel, did not break any laws. However, a little over a month ago, Lori Drew was indicted under a criminal computer fraud statute. The theory of the case is that when Drew registered the account for “Josh” on MySpace, she agreed to provide truthful and accurate information and refrain from promoting anything intentionally misleading. Because she violated this agreement, the federal government was able to charge her with conspiracy to access MySpace without authorization.

Clever, huh? In a way, this seems right – a loophole in the law to allow some consequences for intentional cruelty, some justice for a dead girl. After all, the public outcry about this case was huge – according to the New Yorker article, the local police received phone calls from as far away as India begging them to do something. It is a highly sympathetic case.

But the thing about the law is that a single case sets a precedent. Whether a reward or a pitfall of a common law system, you decide – but in this case, it seems clear that a highly sympathetic set of facts could make very, very bad law. The danger is this: that every terms-of-service violation is a federal crime. Considering that the majority of people don’t even read a TOS contract before clicking through it, they might as well lock us all up right now (between that and the RIAA music downloading cases, they may run out of space soon, though).

Remember how the feds finally got Al Capone for tax evasion of all things? Well, as the WSJ law blog pointed out, now all the government has to do is prove someone violated some random website’s TOS in order to have an excuse for criminal charges. I think that everyone feels for poor Megan, but I wish they could have made some sort of harassment charges stick to Drew instead.

In the meantime, just in case? You may want to make sure you’re not lying about your favorite book on your Facebook page just to make yourself look smarter.