Lori Fields, Social Networking And The Law
The so-called MySpace Suicide case is dominating stories about the Internet and teens this week. Obviously I have become more than a little obsessed.
The story is full of so much compelling information. Clearly, there is a tragic, human story involving the suicide of a little girl on one hand. On the other, a woman - innocent ’til proven guilty btw - whose supposed crimes have lead to her being dubbed “The Most Hated Woman On The Internet”. And hovering around the edges of this Gothic narrative, a legal system that finds itself nearly unable to encompass the landscape of this bizarre, virtual-but-all-too-real crime.
Yesterday I wrote several posts catching up with the going-on of the trial so far: both sides opening statements, the general strategies of both the prosecution and the defense, and some of the inside story, straight from the testimony of Tina Meier, the victim, Megan Meier’s mother.
Today - as promised - I’d like to take some time to really dive into the legal issues that are being stretched, strained, examined, invented and re-thought in what is sure to be a precedent-setting case.
Before diving into the specifics, there is an interesting - if somewhat trivializing - analogy I would like to draw. This case reminds me a lot of the early days of file-sharing and free music downloads. The real issue in both cases is the context of the digital environment. After all, the file-sharers are - well - SHARING! When did sharing become ILLEGAL? The problem of course is that the P2P tech and the Internet is so powerful that this altruistic lending quickly undermined an entire industry. In the MySpace suicide case, the context of social networks, paired with Internet anonymity and no real legal precedents in regards to cyberbullying has again left the legal community scratching its collective head, putting together what could very likely be a losing case against “The Most Hated Woman On The Internet”.
More to come.
