eku Zhong

i agree what the woman did was despicable.. but also agree that there is no way to punish this without opening up a loophole into another festering can of worms..

imagine SL... ppl taking out frivilous cases against everyone and his dog because ..
they arent who they say they are...

just for starters..

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Joshua Nightshade

Making an unnecessary personal attack to preemptively accuse me of making personal attacks because I disagreed with you is childish and juvenile. You degraded the thread to that, like you usually do, and if you want to act as if this is my fault because I have an opinion separate to yours and you cannot apparently handle it, so be it.

You are a child, Fmeh. And once again, welcome to my ignore list. Nobody else ends up there as often as you do.

Fmeh

Clearly the woman is sick and despicable, but under the law she didn't do anything she can be prosecuted for, and that's the bottom line. The woman is scum.

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Fmeh

Yeay! I'm on ignore by Josh! I don't have to listen to him accuse me of not reading his posts every time we have a disagreement anymore!

Joshua Nightshade

The potential for this to be abused by trigger happy litigious types, and only this, is why I had a problem with it.

As I said, I would've looked the other way if they found some way to hyper inflate any number of petty charges just to give her something.

The woman needing to live with herself isn't sufficient punishment to me. She doesn't strike me as the type that feels any guilt from it.

Jessyanne

There's quite a difference between a 13 year old and a 49 year old. It's about protecting children. Megan Meir was a child.

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eku Zhong

i agree with you.. and perhaps (hopefully) they will find another way to punish her.

my first reaction when reading about this was also WTF..
(actually it still is)
The worst thing about the law is that it not only protects the innocent but also the guilty, especially in cases like this.

I have a hard time understanding a lot about legal issues in the USA and how ppl get off scott free when they obviously need to be punished .. just because of things like this or because of previous cases when x=y.

Fmeh

It's a difficult thing. In order to keep as many freedoms as we can, there are sometimes really awful things we need to allow legally.

In a workplace, verbal harassment can end in both legal ramifications and a loss of a job.

In personal life, verbal harassment can't really end in much other than someone leaving to get away from that person, otherwise it could be eventually stretched over to anyone who says the "N" word or "F*gg*t" or "bitch" or what-not being able to be thrown in prison.

Stalking, however, can have some ramifications behind it--and if there is to be any legal recourse done against that woman, it could be under stalking, but it's still a bit of a stretch legally. The ramifications behind such a thing could set a horrible precedent to where people could consider it stalking just because someone found them on Facebook or Myspace to say almost anything. It's between a rock and a hard place, and it sucks.

I hope at the very least that this woman gets chastised by most of the people she knows and that she loses many friends over her behavior, if she ever had any friends.

Pussycat Catnap

To add to what Fmeh said...

This is the cost of a free society.

In a free society, you have to make it as hard as possible for the state to remove liberty. In any balance between letting the guilty go or punishing the innocent - you must error on the side of letting the guilty go.

Its rough at times, like this. But without setting it that way, you lose the concept of liberty.

The sad thing is... this woman will probably -not- have a major personal loss for her conduct. She'll probably gain some level of notoriety and even be celebrated in certain circles; if she manages to migrate into them.


side track:
We're dealing with an age where technology is outpacing social and legel development. Human beings cannot keep up with their toys. Each generation ends up with a radically different frame of mind, and by the time they are adults, the toys out there are already ahead of the norms they are locked into... (witness recent news stories about the downfall of civilization due to teen texting...)

And to bring that back on topic...
- What we have here is a case of one generation not understanding another's use of a technology: a parent not understanding their child's use of Web 2.0... while another adult used that same technology to prey upon the child.

On the one hand I want to say, "this is why the internet isn't for kids."

But on the other hand... "the internet is changing too fast for adults to keep up."

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“It gets you nowhere if the other person's tail is only just in sight for the second half of the conversation.”

Joshua Nightshade

This has nothing to do with liberty or freedom of speech. This is completely absurd.

eku Zhong

i am going to so get dumped on for saying this.. but what the hell
but from where i stand American ppl dont seem to be all that free..

1.free to sue and be sued and scared to move because of it (free to correct my spelling and grammar too if you like)

2.free to bear arms ... and scared to death because so is everyone else

3.free to speak... but you risk 1 and 2 if you do..

4. free to practice any religion.. as long as its not unpopular atm

5. free to indulge in your personal sexual orientation .. as long as you live in the right state....

and thats only a fraction of what i think... i am not so brave as to be totally bombed apart

Chip Midnight

That's a really excellent point. I hadn't thought of the SL angle before. From the benign roleplay to the nastiest premeditated abuse, this kind of thing (minus the suicide) happens in SL all the time. Hell, people on this forum occasionally say things to each other almost as hateful as what this woman said to Megan Meir while pretending to be a boy who liked her, and none of us have a clue if most of the people here are who or what they say they are. The slope isn't just slippery. It's a sheer drop into madness. I think a good way to look at it is this - had Megan Meir not killed herself and maybe just had a good cry instead, and we found out what this woman did, would it seem worthy of a prison sentence still?

Pussycat Catnap

Liberty doesn't end with speech.

Chip Midnight

Yes, and what was done to her is only shocking because it was done by an adult. If it had been the woman's daughter or another classmate it still would have seemed incredibly cruel but more par for the course for how teenagers routinely treat each other.

Tess Whitcroft

1. Litigation has had a profound effect on American society both negative and positive. The system has both protected the little guy and awarded excessive awards and this has ended some activities and made too many people too careful.

2. Yes free to bear arms but there really isn't the fear that you imply. In many states it is just casually accepted.

3. Free to speak but held responsible for your words. The few things you can't say at all are, direct and specific calls to violence, defamation, and endangerment (Shouting fire in a crowded theater for example).

4. Actually America is amazingly tolerant of a diverse rainbow of religions. Don't be fooled be the ranting of the far right wacko factions into thinking otherwise.

5. A real mixed bag with sexual freedom but in spite of setbacks here and there we are making progress.

Tess

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There is a truth that is often overlooked in Second Life,
It is only as great as the effort and heart you put into it.

Govi

Isn't there an old SCOTUS majority opinion in a ruling about Freedom of Speech: that Freedom does not extend to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. I don't think Freedom of Speech extends to telling a 13 year old to kill herself after luring her into believing that you were someone who cared about her. But since there are no supportable criminal laws governing this situation, the recourse of the girl's parents seems to be civil law, perhaps "wrongful death" or "endangerment," because Lori Drew certainly knew she was harming Megan Meir, she just had no idea how much harm she was doing.

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Merovigan

It's FALSELY shouting fire. You can shout fire in a crowded theater, it just has to actually, ya know...be on fire.

It's irrelevant though - we just don't have any laws against what she did. I'm afraid there's only one course of action society can use to effectively punish Lori Drew, and that's through mob intimidation for the rest of her life. I promise to hate her forever, and always keep what she did to Megan in my mind. I'll probably never come into contact with the woman but, if I do, I promise to treat her like the piece of shit she is.

Ultimately Megan killed herself and I blame Megan and her family for that more than I blame Lori. Still, I hate Lori more because whenever any of us is confronted with a child there is only one way to treat them - justly. To do otherwise violates some sort of communal unspoken law.

Ya just don't fuck with kids...ya know?

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“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

Frederick Douglas