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Woman Accused in MySpace Suicide Case Seeks to Have All Charges Dismissed
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After a meeting in March 2007, "it was decided that the case should be declined for federal prosecution," according to an internal memo from the FBI's St. Louis office.
Later, however, federal prosecutors in the Los Angeles area, where MySpace's servers are, picked up the case.
"To my knowledge, it is the first case of its kind in the nation,'' U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien told reporters. "But when an adult violates terms on a MySpace account to gain information that creates this type of reaction, it caused this office to take a really hard look.''
While acknowledging that public sentiment runs against Drew's purported Web behavior, some legal experts and civil liberties groups argue that the prosecution's case would mean that millions of people who violate the terms of service at the Web sites they visit could become criminally liable.
Many people gloss over or simply skip the legal documents they encounter on the Web. But in the Drew case, the essence of the prosecution is that by violating MySpace's terms-of-service agreement, she was accessing the MySpace system "without authorization."
"The problem with this case is it makes a criminal out of virtually everybody online," said Mark Rasch, a former computer crime prosecutor at the Department of Justice and now a privacy and security consultant. "This was a hackers' statute -- a break-in statute. When we start to apply it to other conduct, it puts other people's liberty at risk," he said.
"The conduct that is abhorrent is leading this girl on -- and if they want to prohibit that, they should pass a cyber-harassment law," Rasch said.
Experts in the field also said that if violating terms of service is a crime, then the Web sites that write the agreements essentially could function as lawmakers or prosecutors.
"The possibilities for abuse are endless because Web site terms of service are arbitrary," said Orin S. Kerr, a former federal computer crime prosecutor and now a George Washington University law professor, who has provided informal advice to the defense. "A computer owner could set up a public Web site; announce that only Christians can visit; and then refer for prosecution any Jews, Muslims or atheists who visit the Web site out of curiosity."
