Could You Continue to Live There?

The next day after school, Megan asked her mother -- Tina Meier restricted Megan's online access -- to log on the computer so Megan could check for new messages. What she found horrified her. Josh was still sending mean notes. And he had apparently been sharing her messages with others. Now the online community was abuzz with invective. Megan was fat. Megan was a slut.

Megan was destroyed. Especially after one last hateful message from Josh. You're a bad person, he said. Everybody hates you. The world would be better without you.

Click Here for Justice?
By Adam Hunter, special to MSN Tech & Gadgets

Online mobs can shame lawbreakers, but do they go too far?

"They say it takes a village to raise a child?" the anonymous vigilante wrote. "In this case, it will take a village to shame a monster."

It was Nov. 13, 2007. A few days earlier, there had been an article in a local St. Louis paper, telling the story of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old girl who had committed suicide more than a year earlier. The article quoted Megan's parents, telling how a malicious message sent from a fake MySpace account created by one of their neighbors (the mother of a former friend of Megan's) may have sent their daughter over the edge. The blogosphere was intrigued: Who would pull such a cruel prank?

One blogger, Sarah Wells, decided to find out. She used the details in the article and public tax records to find out the neighbor referred to in the article. "I'm tired of waiting for someone else to out you," Wells wrote in that day's entry.

Wells posted the woman's name, Lori Drew, and within hours, an anonymous commenter had posted Drew's address. The village got busy. The "monster" had to be taught a lesson.

One by one, they found out where she worked, and called her boss and her clients. Soon, death threats came over the phone and in e-mail. Then a brick sailed through a window of the Drews' house. Someone shot at their sun room with a paintball gun. A hoax blog created in Lori Drew's name enraged crusading bloggers further ?- it seemed to be defending her alleged message to Megan. The Drew family was forced into seclusion. Their family business closed. Drew's husband was fired from his job. Their daughter couldn't return to school.

The Puritans had their scarlet letters to shame those accused of wrongdoing; today, we have the Internet. A federal grand jury in Los Angeles has begun to investigate whether Drew can be tried for committing Internet fraud against MySpace, but on the Web, the trial is already over. Lori Drew, guilty or not, may be branded forever ?- on Google ?- as the woman who murdered Megan.

Did they go too far? What happens when justice becomes the cause of the blogosphere? Does it become revenge?

"In the Middle Ages, a posse gathered to hunt suspects," says Daniel Solove, author of "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet." "Things break down with mob behavior. There's no rule of law to demand that cyber mobs be reasonable, measured and fair."

Cont'd

While what was done to her was reprehensible, nobody could have predicted she would have ended her life over it. Even at that awful age of 13, we are responsible for what we do.

You are answering your own questions, eoe. You could not live in that neighborhood and you would be incapable of extracting revenge so you would have to move and let the passage of time heal the wounds.

We all handle things differently. I would stick with my original plan and kill the bitch.

Mom indicted in MySpace suicide case
Computer charges against woman whose daughter feuded with victim

LOS ANGELES - A Los Angeles federal grand jury indicted a Missouri woman on Thursday over an alleged role in a MySpace online hoax played on a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide.

Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis was indicted on one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress.

Drew allegedly helped create a false-identity MySpace account to contact neighbor Megan Meier who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans.

Meier hanged herself in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her.

Drew, 49, has denied creating the account and sending messages to Megan.

MySpace is based in Beverly Hills. The indictment noted that MySpace computer servers are located in Los Angeles County.

Because of juvenile privacy rules, the U.S. attorney's office said, the indictment refers to the girl as M.T.M.

Each count in the indictment carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Last month, an employee of Drew, 19-year-old Ashley Grills, told ABC's "Good Morning America" she created the false MySpace profile but Drew wrote some of the messages to Megan.

Grills also claimed Drew suggested talking to Megan via the Internet to find out what Megan was saying about Drew's daughter, who was a former friend of Megan's.

Grills said she wrote the message to Megan about the world being a better place without her, which was supposed to end the online relationship with "Josh" because Grills felt the joke had gone too far.

"I was trying to get her angry so she would leave him alone and I could get rid of the whole MySpace," Grills told the morning show.

Megan's death was investigated by Missouri authorities, but no state charges were filed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24652422