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You’re Doing it Wrong
Posted by Hazel Stone | Filed under Buttinskis
Friend of TLIH, Michele Catalano, is now a paid writer for Pajamas Media. Way to go, Michele!
Now, as to *what* she’s writing about… I would have bet you money we wrote about the myspace mom back when the story broke, but apparently not. I know we had some choice things to say about her amongst ourselves. Mention of honey and fire ants was prominent, as was auto da fé. At the very least, she should have been thoroughly shunned by polite society.
Instead some enterprising prosecutor has decided to “adapt” anti-hacking laws to pursue a case against this evil cow, to, as Michele points out, the potential detriment of all web users. Establishing precedent for a conspiracy charge against someone using a pseudonym (*coff*), or even indulging in an otherwise innocent fantasy identity, is Not a Good Thing. As you can see from this very case, if you give your government powers, they will flat use them, regardless of whether the law in question was intended for that purpose or not.
There are a great many failures in this incident…the failure of Lori Drew to be a rational human being, the failure of Megan’s parents to monitor her health, attitude and freaking internet usage, and the now the failure of the Justice Department to act responsibly and declare there to be, however unfortunately, no criminal wrongdoing in the case.
If you want people who do idiotic things like this in the future to be prosecuted under some law, then petition your senator/representative appropriately. But we should not allow them to twist laws intended for a completely different purpose just to salve a public outcry.
Tags: appeasement, high-school
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May 22nd, 2008
This bespeaks a worrisome trend generally: to expand the scope of existing laws beyond their original intent. I haven’t decided whether this is as bad as, or worse than, the other worrisome trend, which is to pass a whole bunch of new laws.
And it’s wonderful to see Michele getting some recognition. She’s written some great stuff over the past decade or so.