MySpace, Megan Meier and the Law
I have been browsing great article that was posted on the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog before the so-called MySpace Suicide case. This piece brings up a lot of the core issues at the center of this important trial.
Judge George Wu is presiding over the case, and it is interesting to take a look at his decision-making process leading up to the trial. As this post demonstrates, one of the points of the Judges attention before the case got underway was the specifics of the way MySpace’s network equipment actually served the online community of social networkers.
Many of these points are commented on by Dean Stewart, Lori Drew’s defense attorney, who seems more than a little frustrated by what may be a generational gap when it comes to the Judge’s understanding of the social network and its technology.
Check this out:
Why is Judge Wu concerned so much with the technology of MySpace? Probably because a major issue in the case is whether a violation of the MySpace terms of service can trigger the Computer Fraud Abuse Act, the statute that the U.S. Attorney’s office is using to charge Drew.
“I was somewhat disappointed that we plowed a lot of the same ground that we plowed before,” said Steward. “My bet is that we won’t get a decision on the motion before trial.”
Steward said the trial will be in two parts: the legal side, such as what the statute means and whether it can be triggered by violating the terms of service; and the factual side, the tragic death of a 13 year-old girl and the question of who caused it. “But the factual side doesn’t have much bearing on the legal side,” said Steward. “Yet it’s far more important because the legal side” — whether lying online and breaching the terms of service of a Web site can constitute a federal crime — “will affect people all over the country. My prediction is that it goes up to Ninth Circuit no matter what happens.”
