Lori Drew

written by Affrodite (a freelance journalist/blogger), affrodite.net (photo of suicide victim Megan Meiers) The story of 13 year old Megan Meier's suicide from O'Fallon, Missouri as the result of cyber bullying by 3 main conspirators (a parent, her 13 year old daughter and a 19 year old female co-worker) who befriended Megan on MySpace under the fictitious identity of a 16 year old boy named Josh Evans raises more questions than answers. As parents, how far is too far when snooping on your children and their friends? How should these cases be handled in the judicial system? Who owns the culpability in these cases? ... Read Full Story

A Los Angeles judge has delayed the sentencing of Lori Drew, the Missouri woman who orchestrated an elaborate MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor who ended up committing suicide. On Monday, U.S. District Judge George Wu rescheduled Lori Drew’s sentencing to July 2. The judge wants more time to review the testimony from prosecution witnesses. He did not rule on a motion presented by the defense to dismiss Drew’s convictions on three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization. As you may recall, Lori Drew humiliated Megan Meier by making up a pretend “boy crush” on MySpace and flirting with Megan. She then ... Read Full Story

Her name was Megan Meier and she was just 13 years old. Megan Meier I’m sure many of you have heard something about what I’m talking about here. The 2006 Myspace suicide and the ensuing court case . Though how many of you knew the little girl’s name? I didn’t. Not until a few days ago when I was reading about the outcome of the trial . And for those of you completely in the dark, here’s a short summary: Megan , and a girl named Sarah Drew , were longtime friends and neighbors, living in O’Fallon, Missouri, only a few houses down from ... Read Full Story

Personally, this woman should have been convicted of murder... Her actions were immoral, unethical, incomprehensible, emotionally abusive and led to someone's death. I hope the public humiliation and hopefully jail time and restitution (even though no amount will bring this family's daughter back) will teach her and others a lesson. Having been the brunt of similar cruelty for speaking truth, I can only hope Drew cleans up her act. Though I doubt it. I wouldn't treat an animal that way. If you have been keeping up with this story - Drew filed a police report on Megan Meier's parents because they destroyed the Drews' ... Read Full Story

Image via Wikipedia What does that mean for the rest of us, given that few of us read let alone understand EULA’s or Terms of Service (TOS) for many of the web sites that we interact with on a daily basis. I am ambivalent on this one, while she dodged the legal felony; it is good and bad for all of us who interact with web 2.0 in one form or another. I cannot help but think back to the controversy about the Google Chrome EULA that basically allowed Google to own everything you did through the browser if you read it in a ... Read Full Story