CDT Balks at MySpace Mom Indictment

By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 5/21/2008 10:49:00 PM

A Missouri mother who allegedly created a MySpace account and used it to cyber-bully a 13-year-old girl who later committed suicide should not have been indicted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, says an Internet public interest group.

Calling the indictment "overreaching" by the federal government, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) says that typically cases like these are handled under state or local law, but Missouri did not have a criminal statute that would reach Drew’s alleged misconduct at the time.

As a result, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles last week invoked a criminal statute more commonly used to go after computer hackers.

Drew allegedly created a fake MySpace profile of a 16-year-old boy who flirted online with Megan Meier. The girl hanged herself in 2006 after being jilted by her suitor. It was later uncovered that Drew was the mother of one of Meier’s friends.

If true, that deception is "unspeakably tragic," says the CDT, a nonprofit group that aims to keep the Internet "open, innovative, and free."

Although Drew allegedly breached MySpace's "terms of service" agreement by providing bogus information to the CA-based company to create an account and then used the account to gain information about Meier, the federal indictment was just plain wrong, argues CDT's general counsel John Morris.

“If the theory of [the May 15] indictment is allowed to stand, it would represent a gross and inappropriate expansion of federal power to regulate speech and communications over the Internet," says Morris, adding that the indictment didn’t have anything to do with the alleged mistreatment of Meier. "In this case the alleged crime is the allegation that Ms. Drew did not follow MySpace’s ‘terms of service.”

The federal law used in this case is appropriate to prosecute someone who breaks into computer systems, CDT acknowledges. But using it "to include anyone breaking a public Web site's terms of service is overreaching."