Mom Who Used Son's Facebook Account Found Guilty Of Online Harassment

from the careful-what-you-post dept

We're somewhat skeptical of the various "cyberharassment" laws out there, as they leave themselves wide open to interpretation (often in dangerous ways). In April, we wrote about one case involving a son who sued his mother for harassment after she used his Facebook account (she went to the computer and he had not logged out) to post angry messages on his wall, pretending to be him, and then changed his password and locked him out of the account. (As a quick aside: I just checked, and as with most online services, Facebook appears to require you to type in your old password before you can enter a new one -- so I'm wondering how she had access to his existing password...).

Either way, Rose M. Welch alerts us to the news that the mother has been found guilty, told to pay $435, given a 30-day suspended jail sentence, and ordered to take both anger management and parenting classes. Clearly, what she did was wrong, though I do wonder if it really reaches the level of harassment. Some of the judge's reasoning also is a bit suspect. Part of the reasoning for the guilty ruling was that the mother had left messages on her son's voicemail that included curse words. The son is 17, so it's not like he hasn't heard those words before -- and the mother insisted that this was part of their normal joking banter. The judge, however, declared it "totally, completely inappropriate." Now, I'm not going to say that leaving voicemail messages to your children with curse words is a good parenting technique, but it still seems a bit extreme to use that as evidence of harassment.

Filed Under: harassment, online
Companies: facebook

West Virginia Looks To Criminalize Online Harassment

from the don't-be-a-jerk dept

There's been an increasing effort among some to make being a jerk online some sort of criminal activity, even though that almost certainly violates the First Amendment. The latest is an effort in West Virginia to create a new misdemeanor for posting false information about someone online, which could result in fines and jailtime. Now, as you probably already know, we already have laws against defamation -- though that's a civil issue, where the defamed party can take the defamer to court. In this case, the law would do two things: (1) make it a criminal issue, getting the government involved in determining who to prosecute and (2) lower the standard for what breaks the law. Specifically, defamation has required not just the spreading of false information, but that it be done with malicious intent, if you wanted any kind of punitive damages. Yet, this law in West Virginia has no such requirement, meaning that simply spreading false information, even if not for malicious intent, could get you brought up on criminal charges. That seems to go against the First Amendment, but since when has that ever stopped lawmakers from pushing bills?

Filed Under: defamation, first amendment, harassment, malice, west virginia

Flirting Over Email Or Text In Scotland Could Land You In Jail

from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept

It appears some Scottish politicians are putting forth a bill that could put people in jail for up to 10 years for sending a text or email with "sexual content." The goal of the bill is to discourage sexual harassment over email or text messaging -- but it appears to be worded quite broadly. The bill defines the crime as "committed if someone sends an unsolicited text message to someone else which a court finds was designed to give the sender sexual gratification or to humiliate, distress or alarm the receiver." How the court determines what gives the sender "sexual gratification" isn't entirely clear. Does a flirty email count? You can also run afoul of the law by "causing a person to see or hear an indecent communication." Forgot that NSFW tag? You might be in trouble. While you can understand the desire to cut down on harassing messages, this law seems problematic as worded.

Filed Under: criminal, email, harassment, scotland, text

Sending Love Notes Via MySpace Not Considered Harassment

from the not-that-it-should-give-you-any-ideas dept

Teenagers fall in love quite easily... and when they do, they often do silly things like repeatedly telling the object of their affection how they feel, even if that love is unrequited. These days, with teens living on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, it should come as no surprise that many are using such social networks to express that love. Apparently, one young woman felt that an infatuated teen's MySpace repeated messages constituted harassment. However, in a rather eloquent decision, a NY court has disagreed, pointing out the awkward and obsessive nature of teenaged love, combined with the more practical fact that MySpace users can block messages (which this girl never did) and that she never bothered to tell the guy to stop sending such messages. Combine this with the recent ruling that sending a Facebook friend request to an ex- is not harassment, and you start to realize that the courts are going to be quite busy over the next few years trying to port offline laws into the online world of social networks.

Filed Under: harassment, social networks
Companies: myspace

Judge Says Being A Facebook Friend Isn't Like Real Friendship

from the glad-we-cleared-that-up dept

Turns out that your Facebook friends aren't necessarily real friends... under the law (at least in the UK). A UK judge has ruled that requesting to be a Facebook friend isn't the same as trying to become someone's real friend, which apparently matters in terms of harassment. The case concerned a woman who accused her ex-boyfriend of harassing her by requesting to be her friend on Facebook, but the judge apparently felt that since most people use Facebook and other social networks more as a list of acquaintances, it's hardly harassment to request to "friend" an ex.

Filed Under: facebook, friends, harassment
Companies: facebook

Will Online Harassment Law Be Used Against Those Harassing Lori Drew?

from the irony-alert dept

The story of the Missouri girl who committed suicide after being insulted by a fake child created by some neighbors keeps getting odder. As you may recall, the police decided (reasonably) that Lori Drew, the woman who participated in setting up and using the fake profile, was found not to have committed a crime. However, the town where they live recently passed a new law against online harassment, which seemed like a kneejerk reaction more than anything else. Still, the law was clearly directed at actions like those of Drew, Drew's daughter and another friend. However, in something of a twist, it now appears that this new law may actually be used against the hordes of folks now attacking Drew and her family online. Remember that a bunch of online vigilantes have taken it upon themselves to harass Drew for her participation in the hoax that resulted in the suicide -- even setting up a fake blog supposedly written by Drew trying to justify the actions. Drew insists she has nothing to do with the blog and it's part of the harassment campaign against her. While it does seem somewhat ironic that a law that was put in place basically because of Drew's actions may now be used to protect her, the lengths that these vigilantes are going to shows yet another example of just how far online mobs can go when they decide they want justice.

Filed Under: harassment, irony

Being A Total Jerk Online Still Isn't Criminal

from the and-so-it-goes dept

Last week, we wrote about the unfortunate situation of the girl in Missouri who committed suicide after some others who knew her created a fake MySpace profile of a boy who befriended her and then turned on her and told her she was mean and he didn't want to be friends with her. As we noted, there was a push to find or make new laws to punish those who had participated, but in the end, prosecutors are noting that no criminal charges will be filed because no actual laws were broken. Yes, it's a tragic situation, but it is not against the law to be a jerk. Of course, those who participated still have to deal with the consequences of what they did -- including attacks from a virtual posse. In the end, this is the right thing. What happened was awful, but you can't bring criminal charges against people for just being mean, otherwise the courts (and jails) would be even more ridiculously overburdened than they already are.

Filed Under: harassment

If Online Harassment Is Harassment... Why Does It Need A Special Law?

from the questions-without-answers dept

There was a tragic story a few weeks ago that I'm sure many of you read about. It involved a teenager who committed suicide after a "boy" she had become friendly with over MySpace stopped talking to her and said he had heard bad things about her. It later came out that the "boy" never existed -- and was actually a former friend in the neighborhood and the friend's mother effectively toying with the girl. There wasn't much to say about the tragedy, though I was wondering how long it would take for people to start blaming online communities or MySpace for such things. That hasn't happened yet, but the town where this happened has now passed a law banning online harassment, with the mayor saying: "After all, harassment is harassment, regardless of the mechanism or tool." That may be true -- but if it is, why isn't anyone asking why there needs to be a separate law for online harassment, if it's already considered harassment? Yes, the situation is tragic, but why the focus on online harassment rather than harassment in general?

Filed Under: harassment, online harassment