According to the article the prosecutor went this route because there are no cyber-bullying laws. Perhaps there should be, but to turn any sort of violations of website terms of service agreements into crimes is a) not the way to deal with this particularly heinous and hopefully unusual situation and b) can, as has been said, lead to all sorts of unintended, adverse consequences.
The problem is that we, as individuals, society and government, are rather poor at making proper, necessary distinctions between phenomena. This largely explains why we do not value and do not practice critical thinking very much. Hence the likelihood to treat a wide range of what are really very dissimilar things the same by a broad law, rule, policy, etc. Lying about one's age, looks, etc. in the typical online dating thing is not the same thing as whatever lying this reprehensible woman engaged in to torment that girl. Moreover, truth and its pursuit is not valued much (and we aren't even honest about this, even with ourselves) and exaggerating and lying is widespread. So if we are going to criminalize such behavior online, why not in the real world? And what would constitute a lie? If you say you are "average build" but are 15 lbs overweight by some criteria, is that a punishable lie? What if you countered that by a different criteria - say, a body mass rating - it was perfectly true? What if you said you were "smart," "rich" or "pretty?" What criteria would be used to determine if you were being misleading? As for dating, deception is a regular part of dating and the mating ritual. So why single out online dating or socializing for criminalization and punishment? Randall On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 10:16 PM, Steve Rigby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Dec 1, 2008, at 8:50 PM, Rev. Stewart Marshall wrote: > > That is what this whole trial was about. I think they could care less if >> someone wanted to make themselves look better to someone else. But if >> someone wanted to use Myspace to harass and injure someone else, it should >> be a crime. >> > > Beware of unintended consequences. Big and sensational events are often > the catalyst for bad decisions, bad law and/or legal precedent being set. > > To wit, September 11, 2001 as a prime example of note. > > Steve > > > > ************************************************************************* > ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** > ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** > ************************************************************************* > ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
