Know your "limitations"
There is a famous line from a Clint Eastwood movie where he says, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” But it seems that few people these days know when enough is enough. Today we look at the flipside of online harassment…
MMOs (or any of their various iterations) seem to attract nasty people. For some reason our community seems to be famous for what are often dubbed “ass-hats”. Now it may simply be that any time you gather enough apples into a sufficiently large barrel more than a few of them are going to turn out to be rotten. After all its just statistics isn’t it? Earlier this week we looked at a case of a Buffalo Grove, Illinois trustee (Lisa Stone) that is attempting to get a circuit court judge to create precedent that would affect both online communication and first amendment rights.
Why is it, however, that few people, especially where gamers are concerned, seem to know their “limitations” or what their limitations should be?
Gamers are wont to feel that they can hide behind the perceived anonymity of the internet. Yet if Lisa Stone has her way that anonymity will go the way of the do-do bird. As gamers we all seem to think of an avatar as just a collection of pixels, rather than an extension of a real person. What is more, because of the misconception that we are all safe behind proxy servers, people seem to think that their actions have no consequences. This is exacerbated by the number of social networking sites that appear at an ever increasing pace – sort of like the days before the old “dot com” crashes in the States isn’t it?
Consider the case of one Lori Drew (in fact legislators in Texas have done that very thing).
Lori Drew (photocredit Reuters)
Ms. Drew (pictured at right in a Reuters photo) set up a fake My Space page, and assumed a false identity with the express purpose of bullying a 13 year old girl named Megan Meier (you can read about it here - complete text to follow this article). Sadly, Lori Drew succeeded, all too well – the 13 year old Megan hung herself. Now Ms. Drew didn’t go the obvious route of simply sending harassing messages to the young Megan. Oh no. Instead she assumed the false identity of a 16 year old boy and began an on line romance. Then, once the bait was taken, Lori Drew, in the personage of her false identity as a young boy, “dumped” the young Megan, resulting in the young woman’s death.
Whether or not a grown woman set out to actually destroy the young girls fragile life we may never truly know. The reason that Thomas O’Brien, chief federal prosecutor in Los Angeles gives (per the Reuters article) is that “Drew wanted to humiliate Megan for saying derogatory things about Drew’s teenage daughter.” At the time the only violation Drew could be charged with was violating My Spaces terms of service agreement by using a false name to harass other My Space members. But if authorities in Texas have their way that will no longer be the case. According to an article on khoum.com (available here with source text to follow) that has now changed, at least in Texas:
“The new Texas law criminalizes online harassment on social networking sites and through e-mail or text messaging. H.B. 2003 states a person commits a third degree felony if the person posts one or more messages on a social networking site with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten another person.” – James Munoz for www.khou.com
As an author, I take responsibility for everything I say and write. I make no attempt to hide behind a pseudonym or fake ip address. I would point out to my fellow authors and gamers that it is far easier to discover someone’s true identity on the internet than most people realize. Most times it doesn’t take court orders to discover someone’s true identity; usually all it takes is a quick search on Google. My advice, for whatever it’s worth, is not to say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. After all, you never know when that someone you insult will be the same person of which neighbors later say “but he was such a quiet man.”
See you online,
Julie Whitefeather
Source article text: copyright www.dailymail.co.uk
A mother accused of using a fake MySpace profile to bully a 13-year-old girl who later killed herself was found guilty of misdemeanour charges today but cleared of more serious offences.
Lori Drew, 49, of Missouri in the United States, was convicted of three counts of accessing a computer without authorisation by a jury at the federal court in Los Angeles.
But she was acquitted of accessing a computer without authorisation to inflict emotional distress on Megan Meier.
The jurors could not reach a verdict on a conspiracy count.
US prosecutors said Drew violated the MySpace terms of service by conspiring with her young daughter and a business assistant to create a fictitious profile of a teenage boy on the social networking site to harass Megan.
Megan, who had been treated for depression, hanged herself in 2006 after receiving a message saying the world would be better without her.
Drew, who could have been sentenced to 20 years in prison if convicted of the four original counts, now faces up to one year in prison and a $100,000 (£65,177) fine for each of the three counts of accessing a computer without authorisation.US District Court judge George Wu declared a mistrial on the main conspiracy charge.
Drew did not show any visible emotion when the clerk read the verdicts and it was not known whether she will be retried on the conspiracy count.
Most members of the six-man, six-woman jury left court without speaking to reporters.
But one juror, who would only identify himself by the first name, Marcilo, said the jurors were not convinced Drew’s actions involved the intent alleged by US prosecutors.
‘Some of the jurors just felt strongly that it wasn’t tortuous and everybody needed to stay with their feeling. That was really the balancing point,’ he said.
The case hinged on an unprecedented application of computer-fraud law, which some legal experts described as highly questionable.
US prosecutors said Drew and two others created a fictitious 16-year-old boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages from him to Megan.
The young girl hanged herself after the ‘boy’ dumped her, saying: ‘The world would be a better place without you.’
US Attorney Thomas O’Brien, the chief federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said Drew wanted to humiliate Megan for saying derogatory things about Drew’s teenage daughter.
He said Drew knew Megan suffered from depression and was emotionally fragile.
‘Lori Drew decided to humiliate a child,’ he told the jury.
‘The only way she could harm this pretty little girl was with a computer. She chose to use a computer to hurt a little girl, and for four weeks she enjoyed it.’
Prosecutors said Drew, her then-13-year-old daughter Sarah and Drew’s 18-year-old business assistant Ashley Grills set up the false MySpace profile for a boy named ‘Josh Evans’, posting a photo of a bare-chested boy with tousled brown hair.
‘Josh’ then told Megan she was ‘sexi’ and assured her, ‘i love you so much’.
Mr O’Brien said it was America’s first cyber-bullying trial.
But some legal experts suggested that Mr O’Brien overreached and that a conviction might not stand up on appeal.
Drew was not directly charged with causing Megan’s death.
Instead, she was charged with conspiring to violate the fine print in MySpace’s terms-of-service agreement, which prohibits the use of false names and harassment of other MySpace members.
Mark Krause, prosecuting, said: ‘The rules are fairly simple. You don’t lie. You don’t pretend to be someone else. You don’t use the site to harass others. They harassed Megan Meier.’
Dean Steward, defending Drew, said his client had little to do with the content of the messages and was not at home when the final one was sent.
He added that nobody reads the fine print on service agreements.
‘How can you violate something when you haven’t even read it?’ he said. ‘End of case.’
Missouri authorities said there was no state law under which Drew could be charged.
But federal prosecutors in California claimed jurisdiction because MySpace is based in Beverly Hills.
After the suicide, Missouri passed a law against cyber-harassment and similar federal legislation has been proposed on Capitol Hill.
During the week-long trial, the court heard Megan’s mother, Tina, recount finding her daughter.
Prosecutors also called some of Drew’s friends and associates, who painted the defendant as cold and indifferent about the prank and the suicide.
Source Article : copyright www.khou.com
Somerset Chief Martin Chavez said the department had enough probable cause to issue a warrant for the young girl’s arrest.
“Don’t harass people online. The crime is severe, it’s a third degree felony. So, even if you’re joking sometimes it can really hurt people and now it’s against the law,” said Chief Chavez.
Details of the incident weren’t made available, but police say the harassment went on for a few months and involved a dispute over a boy.
The 16-year-old girl has a detention hearing Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.
It seems the goal of the new law was to discourage using the name or persona of another person to create a Web page. Some people expect legal challenges to the constitutionality of the new internet law.