Court Says Prosecutors Can't Just Assume A MySpace Profile Is Legit

from the why-didn't-they-ask? dept

A murder lawsuit in Maryland involved some evidence from a MySpace profile (allegedly from the defendant's girlfriend, attempting to intimidate witnesses). A police officer went to the profile and printed it out, but prosecutors did nothing else to authenticate that the MySpace profile and the comments on the page were legit and placed by the girlfriend. A lower court said this was fine, but as Venkat Balasubramani discusses, the Maryland Supreme Court has said that just printing out a MySpace profile and showing it to jurors is not enough to prove that the content really came from the person in question. The court even cites the infamous Lori Drew case, in pointing out that it's easy to create fake profiles of people. In the end, the court makes a simple point: if you want to authenticate that a social networking page is from a particular person, there are a number of ways to do so, starting with asking the person in question if it's their website. Stunningly, prosecutors in this case never did that.

I have to admit that I'm a bit confused by the dissent on this case, as described by Venkat:

Two dissenting judges accuse the majority of having a case of the "technological heebie-jeebies," and note that the key question is whether a "reasonable juror" could conclude that the evidence in question was authentic. In other cases where the authenticity of a piece of evidence is disputed, the typical practice is to let the jury make the call, unless the court concludes that "no reasonable juror" could find the evidence authentic. The dissenting judges fault the majority for not following the same practice in this case.

I don't see how it's a case of technological heebie-jeebies at all. If anything, it's the reverse. It's recognizing that (1) such evidence is easy to fake and (2) there are some very easy steps to authenticate the evidence. In a case such as a murder case, isn't it a reasonable standard to make sure that such evidence is, in fact, authentic?

Filed Under: court, evidence, myspace profile, social media

Woman Sues MySpace For Taking Down Her Page

from the mental-anguish dept

It's no surprise that some people get attached to their various social networking profiles, but would you sue if the social network took down your profile? That's exactly what one woman is doing, as seen in a lawsuit filed last week and brought to our attention by Eric Goldman. The complaint lays out the details, but a quick summary is that the woman was shocked (shocked!) to find out that some of the celebrity profiles on MySpace are not, in fact, run by the actual celebrities. So she set up a profile that would "verify" celebrities, and allow those verified celebrities to place her logo on their MySpace page. She claims that one of the fake celebrities complained to MySpace and they took down her profile.

Now, you might think that since its MySpace's site, they can take down whatever profile they want -- but not according to this woman, who mentions the "mental anguish" caused by this over and over again. While it may be a bogus reason for MySpace to have taken down her page, it's not clear what legal grounds she has to stand on. There are some other complaints in the filing, including the fact that MySpace allowed fake celebrities to sign up (and the lawsuit demands that MySpace be forced to take these fake profiles down) and that she had asked MySpace (via a cold call) to support her efforts -- and then was offended when MySpace "stole" her idea and had created their own "celebrities" site (of course providing no evidence that the idea was "stolen"). She also complains that she tried to take her complaint to the arbitration firm listed in MySpace's terms of service only to discover that the firm no longer did work for MySpace, so she claims that MySpace committed unfair business practices by including the arbitration clause in its terms without living up to it.

The best line in the filing may be after MySpace took down the woman's second attempt at this "celebrity verifying" profile:

"At this point Plaintiff was literally seething with anger to the point that she was now consumed by it."

It's not clear what's illegal about making someone angry, but these days, you never know... Anyway, the full legal complaint is below (click through for those reading this via RSS):

Filed Under: lawsuit, mental anguish, myspace profile
Companies: myspace

Principal Loses Lawsuit Against Students Over Fake MySpace Profile

from the taking-the-pal-out-of-principal dept

You may remember a story we had last year about a principal at a school so overreacting to some students creating a fake MySpace profile for him that he took them to court. It's one thing to ask MySpace to take down such a profile or to discipline the students in school (both of which would likely backfire as well), but to take them to court seems extreme. And, apparently, the courts think so too. An appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that there was no defamation or intentional infliction of emotional distress in the case. Of course, the judge does also scold the kids for their "unacceptable" conduct. Luckily for the kids, "unacceptable" wasn't against the law in this case.

Filed Under: defamation, myspace profile, principal, students
Companies: myspace