Michele,
In thinking about the legal issues involved in the Lori Drew case, I think it might be helpful to try the following thought experiment.
First, remove Lori Drew and the other adults from the case.
Apparently, the daughter had access to the fake account, so this is not entirely unreasonable. If what the mother did violated federal law, presumably the daughter also violated the same law as she participated in the same conspiracy and accessed the same account.
Subtracting the adults, we are left with is a 13 year old girl registering a fake account on a website and using it to be mean to another girl in her class.
The registering of the fake account, violating the terms of service, is apparently what makes it federally illegal. So, let’s remove the technology and the way the prosecutor is applying the contract language from the equation and imagine instead that the correspondence occurred in real life, without an intermediating third party. Let’s say, for example, that the notes from “Josh” were slipped into the target’s locker.
What we are left with is a teenage girl playing a mean prank on another teenage girl and that girl ends up with her feelings hurt. You know, the sort of thing which has happened all day, every day, in every high school in the history of high school.
Yes, it is bad that teenagers bully each other and are mean to each other. No, it should not be a federal crime carrying a possible sentence of five years for hacking, even if it happens on the internet, violates Terms Of Service and the victim happens to react very badly to the bullying.
There is no legal right to not have your feelings hurt.
=darwin
