Mike T, before I move on to our points of disagreement, I want to say that your point about selective enforcement of laws is a legitimate one. Also, I agree with you that the relevant legislatures should be passing laws to deal with situations like this.
At the same time, I don’t see a legal or moral “right” to anonymity on the ‘net, and in any case there are ways of remaining anonymous without resorting to faking completely different personalities. In fact, this doesn’t actually seem to be the only, or even the main, issue here (see below).
More importantly, my understanding is that MySpace TOS were violated–and rather egregiously so. As commenter Huxley above noted,
“Among other things, the MySpace TOS [Terms of Service] require prospective members to provide truthful and accurate registration information; to refrain from using any information obtained from MySpace services to harass, abuse, or harm other people; to refrain from soliciting personal information from anyone under 18; to refrain from promoting information that they know is false or misleading; and to refrain from posting photographs of other people without their consent.”
Huxley went on to write
“The indictment alleges that Drew and her co[-]conspirators violated all of those provisions. From the link provided it’s clear that Drew is being prosecuted for far more than making up a fictitious name–and rightly so.”
Why should Lori Drew not be prosecuted for violating both the letter and the spirit of an agreement that she willingly signed? Her crime was not only failing to provide truthful ID–something that MySpace required of her–but also in actually harassing and causing harm to a person–two things also prohibited by the MySpace Terms of Service. Accordingly, it seems to me that if this is the point upon which she is being prosecuted, it’s a very good one–and thus I must disagree with your statement that this is a bad case making bad law.
(A brief aside about guns, the usual libertarian position is one I disagree with, just as I am disagreeing with what seems to be the usual libertarian position on this issue and this case.)
