The Megan Meier suicide case in Missouri (US) where the 13 year old girl committed suicide after being befriended and rejected online by a 49 year old lady posing herself as a 16 year old boy has attracted attention worldwide both for its tragic implications as well as the legal aspects involved in the trial which is now on.
In this case, the accused Lori Drew has been held guilty by the Jury in a District Court but the arguments are now in process for determining the punishments. The accused Lori Drew, 49, has now appeared before the court on four counts – one of conspiracy and three of gaining access to protected computers without authorisation to acquire information used to inflict emotional distress. The charges carry a possible 20 years prison term.
Drew is alleged to have created a fake identity on MySpace called Josh Evans through whom she then approached and cyber-befriended her next-door neighbour Megan Meier. Evans, supposedly 16, exchanged flirtatious emails with Meier over five weeks and then on October 17 2006 told her he was moving away from the suburb of St Louis in which she lived.
She has reportedly replied: “I love you so much.”
According to the prosecution, a week later the exchanges grew darker in tone, with Evans sending emails the prosecution claims were emotionally cruel. One supposedly read: “I don’t know if I want to be friends with you any more because I’ve heard you are not very nice to your friends,” and a final one said: “The world would be a better place without you.”
Within an hour of receiving that message, the indictment against Drew alleges, Meier went up to her bedroom and hanged herself from the closet.
Now it is reported that Federal Prosecutors in California, 1,600 miles away from Meier’s home, have invoked the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984, which is usually applied against hackers to punish Lori Drew.
The prosecution has argued that the servers used by MySpace, which are maintained in Los Angeles, (hence the location of the trial) were violated by Drew and her unnamed co-conspirators who used false information to set up the account and therefore broke the website’s terms of service. MySpace is not a party to the prosecution, but has not reportedly protested against the action.
Naavi.org appreciates the initiative taken by the prosecutors in this regard though many legal experts may not be in agreement with the approach of applying the Computer Abuse Act to the case of Cyber Bullying.
In the Indian Context, Naavi.org has been consistently suggesting that ITA 2000 is flexible enough to be applied in most offences some of which may be offences under ITA 2000 itself where as some are offences under IPC, while shortsighted legal experts have been arguing in India that Information Technology Act 2000 (ITA 2000) does not cover many offences.
We feel that it is the obligation of the law enforcement to apply the available laws by interpreting it appropriately. We also feel that in an emerging legal area where Jurisprudence is still under development, it is necessary to understand the intentions behind a law and apply it to the domain with some form of “Creative Interpretation”.
One such offence which is is “Cyber Stalking” or “Cyber Bullying”. When a person is harassed through the electronic media such as e-mail or SMS or through creation of profiles in social networking sites, the offence is one of “harassment”. Some times it is “Sexual harassment” and some times it may be “threatening”. These are offences under IPC and not directly under ITA 2000.
“Creative Interpretation” of this emerging law of Cyber space however suggests ways and means of fitting some of these expenses under ITA 2000.
For example, according to ITA 2000, “Electronic documents” are equal to “Paper documents”. Though this statement is more apt for commercial transactions, they need to be also applied for criminal aspects. If a person can commit an offence such as “Threatening” or “Defaming” etc using a written communication such as a publicly distributed pamphlet or a letter, it can also be done through e-mail or a website or an SMS.
The “equality principle ” which states “Electronic documents are equal to Paper documents in the eyes of law” should make it possible for invoking any IPC offence when it is committed with the use of electronic documents.
Similarly when a user of MySpace has been granted certain rights to use the facilities and uses it for other purposes (It may be for cyber bullying, creating false profiles etc), it is an “Unauthorised use” or “Unauthorised access to the facilities”. This is “hacking” under section 66 of ITA 2000 and also liable for compensation under Section 43 of ITA 2000. This is the same interpretation which has now been followed by the prosecutors in California in the Megan Meier case.
Additionally, there is also a possibility in Indian law to interpret the provision of section 66 of ITA 2000 regarding “Diminishing the value of Information residing inside a computer resource” in many cases of abuse of social networking sites.
The Megan Meier trial in California is therefore a path breaking development in the development of Cyber Jurisprudence irrespective of which way the decision finally goes.
Naavi
4 users commented in " Computer Abuse Act Invoked Against Cyber Bullying "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHi, thank you for taking the time to share this information concerning NAAVI. This internet impersonation problem is all over the place. MySpace is of no exception and they continue to enable this problem. I, for one, have seen it first hand.
What Lori Drew did was unbelievable. If these girls were having so many problems with one another, she could have Googled “Bullying” and found some of us who could have helped her. Yet, she chose to do what she did and she needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Again, thanks for this information. I also try and help with this impersonation problem and celebrities as they have it the worst of anyone. Your resource is one that will be valuable in the future.
Regards,
Elizabeth Bennett
Hi,
The info. is quite wonderful.
But i am confused with one statement.
You said that her act can be considered as hacking u/sec. 66 in Indian scenario.
I am very confused with this argument. Plz explain it me if poss.
Regards
Sagar Rahurkar
Thanks for the comments Ms Elizabeth.
Mr Sagar, in the context of this case, I actually meant that My Space had not authorized Lori Dew to use the space in any name other than hers, particularly if it was meant for cheating, bullying etc. Hence it became an unauthorized access to Myspace resources. This is the classic definition of “hacking”.
Indian definition of “hacking” under section 66 of ITA 2000 is of course slightly different. According to this section, “Destroying”,”Deleting”, “Altering”,”Diminishing the Value of”,”Diminishing the utility of”,”Affecting injuriously”, any information residing inside a computer is said to constitute hacking when done with intention or with knowledge to cause wrongful harm.
Information under a false name per-se alters the value of the information in comparision to the same information under the right name.
I feel that this is applicable even when there was “no Information in the first place in the name of the correct person” and the impersonator created a “negative value” to this zero value information space.
Naavi
Hello Sir,
Thank You for the reply,
I am a little intrigued by your line of thought. It is very interesting though. The way i look at the word alteration is more traditional…..
For alteration there has to exist information in the original form – which is altered subsequently.
regards
Sagar
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