Megan Meiers Suicide: Internet Fake Identity

[Pure]

read the case. comment. is this a matter for criminal law? if, not, what is the remedy? what can parents do? (I'm not sure why the case has exploded just now, but it's on the evening news. perhaps it's because of the prosecutor's decision. see this update:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gg5xCtQtLBF6vJqWXStItGEOsJfwD8TAABS01 )


[[ADDED: another thread raised this topic. i hope this one will focus on the law: Was a law broken? Should a law be drafted? Is this a matter for Congress, or for states? What other legal remedies might be appropriate?

As well, the company policy issues, re preventing such incidents, e.g. policies of 'my space.' are interesting. Should a fake-identity 'face book' page be taken down?]]



megan, 13, committed suicide after an internet boyfriend turned on her, and began posting to others with insults, and telling her directly that the world would be a better place without her. the 'boyfriend' did not exist, but was created by a neighbor to retaliate against megan for dumping her daughter as a friend. the prosecutor will lay no charges, since there appears to be no applicable law. (it is not against the law, for instance, to cruelly and fraudulently betray someone in a romance or fake engagement. not all cruelty reaches the level of 'criminal act', ie social harm; e.g. many lies that lead to cruel consequences are not criminal per se. civil litigation for infliction of emotional distress may be possible.)

http://stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2007/11/10/news/sj2tn20071110-1111stc_pokin_1.ii1.txt

the upshot has been nasty, since no charges can be laid. some internet citizens have taken matters into their own hands, to retaliate against the neighbor and her business. see the second article below.


http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/11/vigilante_justice

==

see also,

http://www.chicagotribune.com/servi...7,0,2946138.story?coll=chi-classifiedjobs-hed

http://blog.vivianpaige.com/2007/11/23/community-fights-back-in-myspace-suicide-case/

 

[starrkers]

deja vu

This thread covers the same ground.

 

[Pure]

sorry i missed that, starkers.

in any case, the topic is flaring up again, so maybe a new thread is not bad.

i hope this thread focusses on the legal issues, and quandary, as much as the human aspect.

 

[emap]

Pretty sure this would have to be a state law since even abusing someone's trust to suicide is not a federal crime.

I do seriously think a new law should be written though, in every state. Not sure what to base the law on, since it is technically not illegal to lie to people.

I don't know, I suppose that the only way to keep this from happening is to make everyone logging into myspace or the personals and so forth register with a photo ID of some kind. Since a law on internet activities is rather unexplored territory.

Brings to mind something else, though similar in a way, why is it not illegal for all these people or companies to send out those you won a million dollars or would you be a next of kin for this dead person and help me take 10 million out of the bank I work at emails? Granted generally they are not in the US, but what is Interpol for then?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I suppose that if they make a law to cover this, the law will be used to capture every rat who lies on-line.

But my thinking is: Allowing a volatile teen to be on-line, unsupervised is culpable negligence by the parents. Like allowing a kid who cant swim to go to the lake unsupervised. Or letting a kid build a treehouse too high. Parents cant control what rats say, but they can control what Sis & Junior do.

 

[emap]

James you silly, Pure said that this thread was all about the legal issue.

Besides, she was being monitored, mom was called away to take Megan's brother to the doctor when the whole bad part happened.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

There is no legal issue unless PURE conquers the world and imposes Puritannical Law on everyone. Cause the rats in the Bahamas or wherever will laugh at you until he does.

 

[R. Richard]

I suppose that if they make a law to cover this, the law will be used to capture every rat who lies on-line.

But my thinking is: Allowing a volatile teen to be on-line, unsupervised is culpable negligence by the parents. Like allowing a kid who cant swim to go to the lake unsupervised. Or letting a kid build a treehouse too high. Parents cant control what rats say, but they can control what Sis & Junior do.

From what I read in the rather brief story, Megan's mother did exercise quite a bit of supervision. Megan apparently was not allowed to just roam the Internet at will.

 

[tickledkitty]

Hindsight is 20/20, right? Yeah, Megan's mother probably should have been more aware of what her kid was doing. However, she was probably completely clueless.

I think people who don't spend a lot of time online and are not involved in any type of online community really don't know a lot of what goes on. Sure, they see it on TV occasionally, but I don't think they realize it's a widespread as it is. I think they have the attitude that this sort of thing only happens to other people.

The other mother that posed as the boyfriend...I can't imagine what kind of person would do that to a child. Yeah, there are kids I personally can't stand, but I can't imagine doing them any harm. I didn't read the article, so I don't know what kind of retaliatory measures have taken place, but that's just wrong too.

Not sure what the answer is. I don't see how a law could be enforced even if there was one against this sort of thing. Look at illegal downloads of music. Everyone knows it's illegal, but a whole lot of people continue to do it frequently.

 

[Pure]

my impression was that she was supervised to a degree. her parents knew about "josh," and iirc about his turning on her.

it's hard to see how there could be a law against 'false identity' or even 'manufactured identity,' on the net. how would it apply at literotica?

IF you could trust some companies, like myspace, there could be a rule (of theirs) about furnishing them with correct identity. This would be analogous to newspaper 'personals.' the ad can keep your identity private, but the newspaper has to know who you are.

it's hard to see a law against 'lying' or even 'lying and disappointing,' though there used to be a law against luring a woman to bed with a false promise of marriage.

it's also difficult to see a law against personal messages that say, for example, 'the world would be a better place without you,' or 'you're an evil bastard/slut/ whatever.' even public postings like that, it's my impression, don't break the law. it breaks the law to say, "John Blogus stole from his employers" where John Blogus is a real name. for the internet, e.g. here, the 'damage' would be tricky to prove for a screenname: e.g. if i denounce a screenname, and say "hotlittlepoonanny" steals from her employers." (i made up this name.)

the closest i can come is something like harassment. but that would have to be personal, like repeated emailing or PMing. it couldn't be harassment--of a prosecutable kind-- to post "hotlittlepoonanny is a lying sack of shit" wherever she turns up on the 'net, though a forum might try to ban 'flame' (insult) postings of all kinds.

i'm not sure, however, if 'harrassment leading to suicide' is a possible law; or if it were, how it would ever be proven, as to intent. also, in the present cases, a person with a history of depression might commit suicide for unknown reasons. IOW the defense would say 'pure coincidence,' or 'very minor contributing cause at best.'

all the present remedies against cruelty are civil, e.g. infliction of emotional distress; these are costly.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PURE

I know it takes MySpace a while to address complaints. But they have something like 200 MILLION accounts.

When I worked for the state we got something like 300,000 Plus abuse reports every year. Eighty percent of them were false reports...harassment, paybacks, custody disputes, etc. Each report cost taxpayers about $1000 to check-out. I have families on my caseload who get, easy, one abuse report every week....and no one is abused.

I think we oughta divide the world into two piles: one pile works and the other pile police's the workers. Each of us can have our own cop to watch us.

 

[cantdog]

I do dearly hope no one passes some damn law over this. Surely the civil redress which can likely be sought is sufficient.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

CANTDOG

Oh! They'll pass a law, but it's unenforceable. They'll do it for show.

 

[Stella_Omega]

prosecuter has refused to press charges

The feds have had no problem about trying to bring the law to bear on child porn. It's possible that they could use a similar argument in this case, but the prosecutor says that he reviewed child endangerment laws before he made his decision.

In my opinion, he made a bad decision that leaves the perps open to vigilante justice. Presumably, the family will file a civil case.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

STELLA

Child porn is easy to convict. There is very little to interpret.

"You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out, you put your left foot in and you shake it all about. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around. Thats what its all about!"

But calling some kid an 'ass-clown' may not be so cut and tried.

 

[3113]

I think this is exploding now simply because the whole issue was ready to explode and this was the spark that set it off. Enough people have gotten immersed in the internet and been in chat rooms and the like and faced off with trolls, bullies, liars and con-men/women, hence, a tinderbox ready to catch fire.

Yes, this is a nasty situation, but what's important is that it's one that touched a nerve in a lot of people who identify either with Megan or her parents. They identify with being conned and abused by predatory internet folk hiding behind masks OR they know someone who has been abused that way OR this sends them back to jr. High or High School where they were tricked and abused by cruel kids.

Most of all, people want to see a wrong righted, and there's seems to be no way for it to be righted outside of the oldest way there is, public ostracism and disapproval.

Now, should there be laws about the internet? Well, there is a fact going on here about the internet that people are allowed to say what they like without taking responsibility for it because their identity is hidden. Face to face, or in print, a person says something they can be called on it, challenged, even accused of fraud or slander or libel. But on the internet people do hide behind avatars and say and do what they please. They fuck around with people to entertain themselves.

Societies always want to establish rules of courtesy--bowing or shaking hands, don't cut in line, say "please" and "thank you" etc. Now we have this new form of socializing, and people want to create rules of courtesy on it, especially forums where there are kids who tend to gang up on each other, bully, be vulnerable, emotional, and need to learn such rules. In the end, if the forums don't set up their own strict policies, society will demand those on the forums act courteous via laws--whether that is right or not, or a good thing or not.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

3113 God knows I pay for it, but I adhere to a strict truth in packaging policy with my own mind drool on the internet. My stuff is always wrapped with cellophane. STELLA will likely complain that it isnt wrapped tight enough.

 

[Boxlicker101]

What these people did is despicable, without a doubt, but I don'tthink it's illegal. I mean, my name is not really boxlicker101. That's just a name or handle I use. It's not illegal to pretend to like somebody, and then insult that person. It might be libel or slander, but insulting somebody personally is not usually illegal. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a civil case brought, though, since these people deliberatly caused Megan distress.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I think this is exploding now simply because the whole issue was ready to explode and this was the spark that set it off. Enough people have gotten immersed in the internet and been in chat rooms and the like and faced off with trolls, bullies, liars and con-men/women, hence, a tinderbox ready to catch fire.

Yes, this is a nasty situation, but what's important is that it's one that touched a nerve in a lot of people who identify either with Megan or her parents. They identify with being conned and abused by predatory internet folk hiding behind masks OR they know someone who has been abused that way OR this sends them back to jr. High or High School where they were tricked and abused by cruel kids.

Most of all, people want to see a wrong righted, and there's seems to be no way for it to be righted outside of the oldest way there is, public ostracism and disapproval.

Now, should there be laws about the internet? Well, there is a fact going on here about the internet that people are allowed to say what they like without taking responsibility for it because their identity is hidden. Face to face, or in print, a person says something they can be called on it, challenged, even accused of fraud or slander or libel. But on the internet people do hide behind avatars and say and do what they please. They fuck around with people to entertain themselves.

Societies always want to establish rules of courtesy--bowing or shaking hands, don't cut in line, say "please" and "thank you" etc. Now we have this new form of socializing, and people want to create rules of courtesy on it, especially forums where there are kids who tend to gang up on each other, bully, be vulnerable, emotional, and need to learn such rules. In the end, if the forums don't set up their own strict policies, society will demand those on the forums act courteous via laws--whether that is right or not, or a good thing or not.

Every frontier gets civilised eventually...

There are social network sites for kids, neopets being one of the most successful. Teens detest the sensation of being nannied, though.

One positive thing that has come out of this, is the widespread publicity has put a lot of internet users on the alert. My kids have talked about it, and my son mentioned a long discussion on WOW-- it's possible that some intended victim will be more wary, and able to assess the new friend with a measure of scepticism.

Livejournal is an example of a site that is civilising itself; the owners have just put some new safeguards into place, that should work quite well-- if only they would get their policy statements up to date and specific. It's not easy to change these policies, though. LJ was owned by one guy, who was a free-speech-no-spam kinda dude. The site was maintained with paid accounts. Awhile back he sold the site to a company called 6-apart, who maintain corporate blogging sites and develop the software that livejopurnal is based on. They began selling advertising space, raising a shitstorm of protest. They compromised by setting up 'choices'; paid users could 'choose' not to see advertising. They also created a user account that gave lots and lots of bells and whistles in return for lots and lots of advertising.

Most recently, 6-apart caved in to some vigilante group and began a censorchip policy, badly implemented; a number of users woke up one morning to find their journals deleted for unspecified reasons. The reasons turned out to be child porn related, and some of the images that were deemed to be child porn were pictures that mothers had uploaded of their babies breastfeeding (because the aureole shows around the baby's mouth). Other images were of "twink' sex, meaning a young looking man. It was noticeable that images of young-looking women were not being targeted...

The management was flooded with demands for
a; an explicated list of what was and what wasn't considered acceptable. (The management said "Well, we all know it when we see it.")
b; a fair and transparent way of dealing with accusations of offence; it's impossible to remove something that has been flagged if you have no access to your account. They are still trying to work that out. In the meantime, hundreds if not thousands of users have stopped their paying accounts in protest.

The latest news is this new screening system, which chould work well-- And the site has been sold to a Russian company. Presumably, 6-apart did not wish to be a potential party to any US government lawsuits...

back to megan and child endangerment issues; There are two communities on livejournal that are eating disorder support groups. In the sense that the members supprot each other's anorexia, and swap tips on how to keep appetite at bay... Although many concerned members have complained about this and the damage that these peole are helping each other inflict on themselves, 6-apart's query to the feds brought back the answer that it is not illegal.

 

[R. Richard]

I think we oughta divide the world into two piles: one pile works and the other pile police's the workers. Each of us can have our own cop to watch us.

Who will watch the watchers?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

RICHARD

If the watchers are like the watchers I personally know, wont no one get watched.

 

[Pure]

question for the wise

how do you tell if an alleged person you're dealing with on the 'net is real?

(note, I am not necessarily saying, do they have the same name as their screenname)

how do you tell if they are partly real? i.e., there really is john smythe who loves classic blues, but a) he's married, and b) he lives in a bsmt apt. not a mansion.

how would you tell if an *underage* person is real, i.e. what advice would you give a teen? (iow, underage persons often lack phone listings in their name, credit cards, etc.)

 

[matriarch]

how do you tell if an alleged person you're dealing with on the 'net is real?

(note, I am not necessarily saying, do they have the same name as their screenname)

how do you tell if they are partly real? i.e., there really is john smythe who loves classic blues, but a) he's married, and b) he lives in a bsmt apt. not a mansion.

how would you tell if an *underage* person is real, i.e. what advice would you give a teen? (iow, underage persons often lack phone listings in their name, credit cards, etc.)

You don't know, you won't know unless they tell you, or let slips 'things' that give it away.

I am quite convinced just from a 'gut feeling', that a handful of people on here are not who or what they purport to be, and as a consequence, I avoid them.

 

[Chantilyvamp]

You don't know, you won't know unless they tell you, or let slips 'things' that give it away.

I am quite convinced just from a 'gut feeling', that a handful of people on here are not who or what they purport to be, and as a consequence, I avoid them.

I'm with mat, I go with a gut feeling. Or if they start talking anywhere near like my little brother does and did when he was underage I run a mile with the age thing!

And she is right unless they choose to tell you the truth about themselves it is anyones guess if they are being real or not.

If you want tips to give teens...

1. Tell them do not under any circumstances give out their personal information to anyone on the net.

2. Have them set up a google or yahoo web address using intials and not full names. With parental supervision. They could even go so far as to have their birthdate wrong by say a month or so.

3. If they choose to meet someone off the net they need to do it with the parent or an adult of the parents choosing in a well populated area.

Once they are an adult they can do what they like. (omg I'm turning into a mother!)

 

[emap]

Certain parts are falling under legal protection already. In Second Life a couple of different people managed to copy well known items and sell them as their own. The designer and original owners of said items have gotten court hearings and last I heard were working toward taking these people to court over copywrite infringement and lost wages.

The money in Second Life can be bought for real money, and sold for same. Apparently that qualifies it for the same legal protection as a book or poster enjoys.

As near as I recall, one of the items was a bed with sexual animations on it, the other I beleive was a set of clothing.