‘Ben, I was reading through your archives recently when I came across your original post. You’re making some pretty compelling arguments. One request for clarification—is your position that Lori Drew should go completely without punishment for her actions or merely that she shouldn’t be prosecuted on these specific charges?
Also, with this statement “For the rest of her life, Drew will live as a free woman enslaved by what she has caused” are you arguing that the burden of guilt or shame is an adequate consequence to actions that result in a child’s death? (If so, does this apply to all perpetrators, or just the ones for whom there do not exist laws on which to prosecute?)
Would you even concede that Lori Drew’s actions directly correlate to Megan’s suicide?
I think it is important to note that just because the law has not caught up to technology doesn’t mean that a crime has not been committed. Perhaps this case will open the door to the creation of laws that seek not to “limit everyone’s freedoms” but to protect the vulnerable from predators who rely on the anonymity of the Internet to facilitate their behaviour.’
Your assertion that the law hasn’t caught up to technology is the problem I was trying to point out. If Lori Drew had somehow used the internet to snowcrash Megan, I would agree that a crime had been committed that was also relevant to the particular medium involved. However, Megan chose of her own free will to commit suicide. The results of Drew’s actions were dire, but her actions were not criminal. She created a fake account on MySpace and conversed with someone. I’m not sure what damages are directly related to lying about the specific things she used the account for, but the most you could get out of this is a shaky fraud tort (is that the correct syntax?).
As for your question about public shame being appropriate punishment for the death of a child, I absolutely stand behind my opinion that if someone is not guilty of a crime, they shouldn’t be prosecuted. If a student is overwhelmed by schoolwork and decides to commit suicide, do you think the school should be criminally liable? Perhaps the teacher who issued some specific homework? That should answer your question about the correlation between Drew’s actions and Meier’s suicide.
There are already ways to prevent the vulnerable from falling prey to all those evil anonymous people on the internet, such as Lori Drew, 4chan, Iranian protestors, and Chinese dissidents. This includes the decision to not partake in activities that might put you in contact with these anonymous predators and the ability to oversee and limit what your children do.
Any argument that this has anything to do with technology is absurd. Would you contend that if Drew posed as an attractive young pen pal and conversed with Meier through the postal service, it would be a different situation than using MySpace?
