MySpace cyber-bullying goes too far

By: Allison McNeal

The Internet has reached its first cyber-bulling case on MySpace's network.

Lori Drew, from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, has been convicted of impersonating a teenage boy in an online hoax that led to a young girl's suicide.

According to officials, Drew, 49, posed as a teenage boy, named "Josh Evans," using a MySpace account to send romantic, then disturbing, messages to one of her daughter's classmates, 13-year-old Megan Meier.

Meier thought she was messaging with a new, good-looking boy in town and never realized it was all a joke.

Meier, who suffered from depression, killed herself in October 2006 soon after reading a message from Drew's account that said: "The world would be a better place without you."

The case was tried by Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, after Missouri officials determined that Drew had broken no state laws, but the verdict did send an "overwhelming message" to Internet users.

Former federal prosecutor Matthew L. Levine, disagreed about this proposed law and told The Associated Press that O'Brien's legal theory was "very aggressive."

"Unfortunately, there's not a law that covers every bad thing in the world. It's a bad idea to use laws that have very different purpose," he said.

Even though there are disagreements, online safety experts told The Los Angeles Times that the verdict is now pushing social networking sites to regulate their users' activities.

"I think the industry was hoping there would be a strong verdict blaming one user for abusing another because that way it's not their fault," safety expert Linda Criddle said. "These companies claim to have good standards and then do nothing to enforce them. They let people breach their terms and conditions and do nothing about it."

Even though this proposal is up in the air, one major question to ask is what should social network sites like MySpace do to end cyber-bullying?

With the increase in technology and the availability of the Internet, online citizens will have to be more cautious than ever about social networking sites.