The Internet is Serious Business

This post on Groklaw describes the chilling results of the Lori Drew case. Lori Drew was cruel and vicious and possibly contributed to Megan Meier's suicide. But she wasn't convicted of that. She was convicted only of violating MySpace's terms of service. According to the case, that is a federal offense, a felony punishable by up to one year in prison or $100,000 in fines.

Think about this... violating the terms of service for a web site is a felony punishable by time in a federal prison or up to $100,000 in fines. Note that you do not have to be violating the terms of service for a malicious purpose. Now go back and read the terms of service for every web site you use and make sure you are not violating any of them. Now go back and check them tomorrow to make sure they haven't changed.

What Lori did was despicable... but if this case stands, the prosecutors have turned the Internet into a tool to put anyone in prison. I'm seriously considering going out and deleting accounts I don't use often and removing anything controversial I've every posted on the Internet.

Technorati: Bad People, Big Brother, Computer, Law