The internet is full of assholes, there’s no denying that. It’s not as much a statistical anomaly – the whole world is full of assholes – but a combination of having said bastards on a medium that allows them easy reach to the whole wide world, with enough range that they don’t get punched in the nose. I guess it’s all John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory at work.
I’m a big proponent of anonymity, which is one of the components of Gabe’s evil brew – people just need to exercise better judgement when dealing with someone who they don’t know at all. On a case in the U.S., a woman signed up on MySpace under a fake name and harasses a girl, who then kills herself feeling she was being taunted by a boy she liked. Let’s leave aside the fact that the girl trusted this person she didn’t know, and then took such a rash decision based on their remarks. The woman who was taunting her was just convicted of charged with several felonies. She’s a immoral bastard for sure, but the problem is that the reasons they’re charging her with felonies amount to her breaking not the law, but MySpace’s terms of service.
There’s a pretty good analysis of the decision at SecurityFocus.
“Yet, legal experts argue that charging a person for violating computer-crime statutes because they broke the terms-of-service agreement of an online site could lead to the ability to charge nearly anyone with computer crime. Using residential broadband for business purposes? A violation of the terms of service and, thus, potentially a crime. Checking sports sites while at work? A violation of corporate policy and, thus, potentially a crime.”
While the discussion over at Technocrat sometimes veers off too much into someone oughta do something, Jim Hill asks a very good question:
The thing I can’t figure is why the ordinary homicide statutes don’t apply. “A person is presumed to intend the reasonably foreseeable consequences of his voluntary act.” That’s why we can and do outlaw “Fire!” in a theater and fighting words in a bar: you’re presumed to have intended the consequences.
If elaborately befriending a depressed 13-year-old girl by pretending to be the boy of her dreams, spending weeks earning her trust and adoration, and then publicly humiliating her with the kiss-off line “the world would be better off without you” isn’t an indicator of intent, then neither is pulling the trigger knowing which way the bullet’s going to go.
Why indeed? Maybe the prosecutor thought he couldn’t just win a manslaughter case with the evidence. Or maybe there’s a cherry on top for someone if the case was decided this way. From the same SecurityFocus analysis:
Making a violation of such agreements a crime would allow prosecutors the ability to investigate nearly any Internet user, Scott Greenfield, a criminal defense attorney, stated in an online analysis.
“Violating a website’s ‘TOS’ is carte blanche to an imaginative prosecutor,” Greenfield said. “We are all felons if this flies.”
Ricardo Freedom, News and politics, Science and Technology