SubscribeJudge throws out Lori Drew MySpace cyberbully convictions
Lori Drew, the Missouri mother that posed as a teenage boy on MySpace and perpetrated a hoax on a neighbor’s teenage daughter that resulted in the girl committing suicide, is getting her earlier convictions thrown out. From the Associated Press (via MSNBC):
U.S. District Judge George Wu said he was tentatively acquitting Lori Drew of misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization.
Drew was convicted in November, but the judge said that if she is to be found guilty of illegally accessing computers, anyone who has ever violated the social networking site’s terms of service would be guilty of a misdemeanor.
“You could prosecute pretty much anyone who violated terms of service,” he said. The judge, who had delayed the ruling repeatedly, reminded participants that it is only a tentative ruling until he files it in writing.
How about you only prosecute those who violate the terms of service when someone dies as a result of their act?
It’s as though a long time ago we all agreed that it was OK to lie, cheat, mislead, humiliate, and harass someone as long as it was “only” done on the Internet.
Why is that?
Lori Drew knew she was doing something wrong when she went on MySpace pretending to be a teenage boy. She created the fake persona for the sole purpose of humiliating Megan Meier.
Lori Drew’s final message to Megan Meier said that the world would be better without her. Megan Meier hung herself shortly after that. A coincidence?
Hardly.
What happens to your blog when you are dead?
Francis Wood, the Maryland woman who’s husband murdered her and their three children before killing himself had a blog. She maintained the blogspot blog What am I supposed to do now, where she blogged about personal issues including the stress her husband was under with his new job and the fact that she was taking an anti-depressant.
It’s kind of creepy to read.
She recently blogged about one of her children having emergency appendix surgery. It’s somewhat unsettling to read when you realize this young boy who needed surgery only a month ago is now dead, brutally murdered by his own father. Before shooting him with a .25 caliber handgun, he reportedly cut him repeatedly with a knife.
Reading her blog made me think of something I had never thought about before: what happens to your blog when you die?
Since Francis Wood had her blog over on Google’s free blogging service Blogspot, I imagine her blog will be around for quite awhile. Since there are no fees to pay to keep it online, it very well may be floating about the World Wide Internet Web for years to come.
Since I have my blog on AQHost, a paid hosting site, I imagine it would only be around for a month or two after I kick the proverbial bucket and can no longer make the monthly payment. Then again, I pay my monthly hosting fee with an automatic credit card payment. Maybe it would continue taking up Internet space, at least until my card was canceled.
And what happens to your Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook page when you are now longer sucking oxygen? I’m not so sure that I like the idea of my Facebook or Twitter page living longer than me. Maybe there should be some kind of deadman’s switch that requires you to log-on once a week. If you don’t, you will be presumed dead. I don’t want to die and have my fake friends on Twitter and Facebook leaving fake messages about my demise.
Read ‘Spawn’ #185 on MySpace for free
If the only reason you aren’t reading Spawn is because you can’t afford the $3 cover price, I have really good news for you. You can now go to MySpace and read Spawn #185 for free.
Each page is posted as a 750px x 1153px image. All of the images appear on the same page. Once you allow the page to load up, all of the images (comic pages) are available for your reading pleasure. No extra software needed or special hoops to jump through.
This is how digital comics should be done.
Evidently this issue of Spawn is a big one in that something major happens. Usually in the world of funny books, this means that the lead character dies. I don’t know if that’s the case here because Spawn is actually already dead.
Woman goes to trial in MySpace suicide case
Remember that Missouri woman that pretended to be a 14-year old boy so that she could bully a vulnerable 13-year old neighborhood girl and it resulted in the girl killing herself? That woman is finally going to trial.
Lori Drew, 49, posed as a teenage boy named “Josh Evans” so that she could tease and humiliate Megan Meier. Megan had struggled for years with depression and school bullying. The woman’s daughter and Megan were friends until something happened between the two.
U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien said that one of Drew’s plans was to print out the conversations between “Josh Evans” and take it to Megan’s school and let people make fun of this depressed 13-year-old girl.
Missouri officials had earlier declined to charge Drew with any crime. Federal prosecutors in California claimed jurisdiction because MySpace has operations in Los Angeles County. She’s being charged with four different crimes including conspiracy. The Four charges each carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Personally, I hope she gets the maximum and dies of colon cancer in prison.
Bristol Palin’s baby daddy meets John McCain
Lock up your wives and daughters good people of Saint Paul, Levi Johnston is in town. It looks like they cleaned him up a bit. I think they even gave him a haircut. A good one. Like the kind they give in the mall all the way in Fairbanks. The good mall. Not the one with Sears and Value City, but the one with Macy’s.
That’s right. The fancy mall.
I’m not sure what John McCain is doing in this photo. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess he was trying to squeeze some of young mister Johnston’s youthful potency from his arm with his infamous John McCain Kung Fu Death Grip.
Even though John McCain is 72 and Levi Johnston is 18, I’m sure the two got along just fine. They have a lot in common. Both men are pretty tough. John McCain spent five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison where he experienced repeated beatings and torture at the hands of sadistic prison guards. Levi Johnston warned people on his MySpace page that “Ya fuck with me I’ll kick ya ass.”
These two men are obviously cut from the same cloth.
Meet Sarah Palin’s future son-in-law
The New York Daily News has shed a little light on the young man Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin says is the father of her 17-year old daughter’s baby. His name is Levi Johnston and he describes himself on his MySpace page — a MySpace page that no longer exists — as a “fucking redneck” that lives to play hockey and hang out with the boys. He also stated on his MySpace page that he doesn’t want any children.
Whoops.
In a statement released to the public by the McCain campaign, Palin stated that her 17-year old daughter Bristol will be marrying Levi Johnston.
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