 Isn’t it ironic... just yesterday I wrote about the impact of cyberbullying particularly on the younger generation. State officials across the nation seem to be taking a more serious approach to the threat. Missouri has already passed a law banning cyber-harassment, and recently, Assemblyman Ted Lieu of Torrance, California proposed Assembly Bill 86. Under the bill, any student who “cyberbullies” a fellow peer runs the risk of being permanently expelled from school. Much of this legal activity can be traced back to 2006, when thirteen-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after apparently receiving hateful messages from a cyber-friend through popular social networking website, MySpace.com. The “friend” turned out to be a fake member account, allegedly created by Lori Drew, the mother of a former friend of Megan. Since then, the media has been tracking the case, to see if Drew would face criminal charges. On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that the motion to dismiss Drew’s case was denied. That’s right- after months of attempting to press charges, but seemingly without an applicable law being broken, a Los Angeles federal grand jury indicted Drew, according to the AP. The case was set in LA because that is the location of MySpace servers, and it was through the website that the cyber-harassment was conveyed. Despite this, FBI officials continue to comb both Meier’s home state of Missouri and LA alike. The charges, to which Drew pled not guilty, included “conspiracy and accessing computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress.” Fast-forwarding to Tuesday’s report, prosecutors supported the cyber crime statute as applicable against Drew. They further attested to the relevance of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. While this act previously pertained “to Internet hackers who illegally access accounts to get information,” prosecutors contend that Drew aided in the creation of a “false-identity account on MySpace.” To support this, the AP referenced Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause, who reported, “Cyberbullying is a relatively new phenomenon, as is social networking. It is, therefore, not surprising that there have been relatively few prosecutions in this area.” Drew is set to stand before a jury in Los Angeles on October 7th. If you’re interested in the issue of cyberbullying, I recommend checking out the work of MSNBC’s Helen A.S. Popkin- she’s written some rather intriguing opinion pieces; one from early July of this year was- “Cyberbullying really is that bad-” I found to be rather powerful. |
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