Judge Throws Out Convictions in MySpace Hoax

Yesterday U.S. District Court Judge George Wu threw out the misdemeanor convictions of Lori Drew, the Missouri woman blamed for precipitating the suicide of a 13-year-old girl by assisting a cruel MySpace prank, under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Taking a cue from critics such as George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr (who ended up serving as a pro bono attorney for Drew), Wu said he was worried that the legal theory underlying U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien's prosecution of Drew could make any violation of a website's terms of service a federal crime. "It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime," Wu said, "and therefore it criminalizes what would be a... [read full story]                    

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