Lori Drew Indicted

While Lori Drew is evil and deserves whatever Karma has for her, a Missouri resident should not be required to answer charges in California for conduct directed towards other Missouri residents.  This is scary stuff, folks.

UPDATE: Orin Kerr analyzes the issues beyond my, "Um, this is, like, really scary, dude."  Check it out.

Comments

[Aaron]

Agreed. And that's before we start getting into the question of just how many fake profiles exist on MySpace. There are applications you can purchase (if you're a spammer) to fabricate profiles and link them into a network.

[Ken]

I agree that it's scary. As I wrote on my blog, the USAO has pursued a theory that if you register on a web site using an alias, and that violates the site's terms of service (which you haven't read, most likely), and you see things that only registered users can see as a result, you've committed a federal crime.

I submit that most everyone who has registered on web sites has, at one point or another, used an alias or submitted some form of false information (a dead email address to avoid spam, for instance, or a false date of birth to avoid identity theft).

[SarahW]

Commit a crime against a company based in California, and you are open to Federal prosecution in that state, even if a client of that business lives elsewhere. There is no jurisdictional issue, not a new one, not an old one, and I suspect Drew's lawyer is not so ignorant of that as he might pretend with his protests.

If Drew had used a local bulletin board service, she would not have been open to prosecution in another locality. But she chose a company based in another state, and the federal courts there now have jurisdiction. The computer servers she used without permission to harm another person are owned by the California company.

Her lawyer isn't as ignorant of this as he pretends. It's a scoopful of dust to throw up for the media to make people thing the prosecution is somehow unfair, and to by that means gain sympathy for his client. But he knows better. This is not a new jurisdictional question.

[Xceler8]

Shame on you Lori Drew. You played God and the blood is on your hands.