Online Anonymity? Go Directly to Jail
Andrew M. Grossman /
Forget the over-hyped bogeymen net neutrality and the ever-more-omniscient Googleplex. The real threat to Internet freedom comes from plain old criminal law.
In three weeks time, Missouri housewife Lori Drew will face trial for entering false personal details when she signed up for a MySpace account. Her indictment alone, whether or not she is convicted, should frighten anyone who’s ever filled out a form online.
The case, which captured the tabloid media when it broke last year, turns on unusual facts. Drew, posting as a teenage boy, created the MySpace account to probe why a neighbor’s daughter, Megan Meier, had broken off a friendship with her own daughter. She gave a few others access to the account, and things quickly spiraled out of control. Before long, “Josh Evans” (the fictional teen) and Meier were an online couple, and soon after that, they were hurling insults at one another on public message boards.
Meier, already suffering from depression, was devastated by Josh’s turnabout. A final private message from the Evans account–“The world would be a better place without you”–pushed her over the edge. Twenty minutes after receiving it, Meier hung herself in her closet.
Even though she was not responsible for the worst of the messages (according to a prosecutor who investigated the case but declined to file charged), Lori Drew’s mislead an emotionally troubled youth, and that was surely wrong.
But it’s more problematic to say that it’s a crime.
The theory of the prosecutor behind this case would make all Internet users criminals. (more…)