Horribly Sad
Sad sad story here, but an important one. Story of a thirteen year old girl who committed suicide after recieving a barrage of harrassment on Myspace-- sparked by a boy she friended who turned on her. But the boy was not who he seemed . . .
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20071121/tc_usatoday/townmaycriminalize...
The dark side of identity play my friends . . .
Comments
Responsibility for (online) repercussions
Mark, I feel your post bringing up a lot of the issues Wendy and I were discussing earlier in the semester. While it’s certainly one thing to assume the virtual identify of someone, it’s another entirely to engage in enough virtual harassment to drive a young girl to suicide, especially when the perpetrator is assuming the identity of another (in this case, fictionalized) character. It would seem like this particular case raises a number of legal (and clearly ethical) issues—harassment, identity theft (or is it creation? or fraud?), even manslaughter, perhaps.
Yet, many of the reasons that make the Internet great also make it a place that enable a lot of these infractions to occur and make it difficult to apply rules similar to those that exist in real (first) life. What are your thoughts?
I'm not really sure-- this
I'm not really sure-- this is very tricky terrain and something I'd wish to consider more deeply eventually. On the one hand, (and I'll probably come off a bit insensitive here), there's more going on when someone commits suicide then just the obvious triggers (in my opinion). Meaning, nobody likes to get harrassed, but to take it to the level of ending your life . . . at such a young age . . . I can't help but think there were some other factors in this girl's life. With that said, I'm unclear on what harrassment laws in first life, meatspace are; meaning, is this really any different? If someone harrasses someone on a schoolyard day in and day out, is that person held responsible in any way if the person commits suicide? I simply don't know.
On the other hand, I recognize that this is different. Schoolyard harrassment is self-contained. Internet harrassment is harrassment potentially writ large on a much larger social level and it leaves traces and tracks. So if it is a legal offense, it does seem potentially larger; although I wonder if a thirteen year old considers those factors? Perhaps, these are some incredibly aware and tech-savy generations that are coming up.
Finally, I'm not comfortable with the idea of "identity fraud" in this situation. This mother did create an identity and did inhabit it for an extended period of time. If we go with avatar theory, I suppose the fleshy person should be held accountable for what they do with their avatar, because by definition the avatar is a conduit through which to work through. But should this mother be held legally accountable? I simply don't know. I obviously can't applaud what she did, and as I said this is an incredibly tragic, but I simply don't know what to think in a legal sense. Probably didn't answer your question, but these are the kinds of questions that do cross my mind.
I think one of the most
I think one of the most disturbing things in this story is that an adult, a parent, did this. My understanding is the two girls had a falling out and the mother created this sock puppet - imaginary boy to mess with the other girl. The girl who committed suicide was being treated, or had been in treatment in the past, for depression. So yeah, there's a lot more going on here.
Law enforcement says there's no law that this quite fits under. Strange, I would think it would count as some sort of harassment. Is this a case of officials not being able to adjust to cyberspace? Or do we really need to write cyberlaws?