p2pnet - rss feed: Censoring ourselves online ‘just in case’
p2pnet news | Freedom:- It has always been difficult to stay completely on the right side of the law, however law-abiding one tries to be.
I try to check the copyright status of every picture I use in my presentations, but may sometimes slip up. Copying CDs I own to my iPod may - or may not be - illegal, and copying DVDs I own certainly is. And like all drivers I sometimes see the speedometer creep up above the speed limit when I’m not paying attention to it on a quiet motorway.
But now it seems I could face prosecution for the wide range of user accounts I’ve created on MySpace, Facebook, Googlemail, Flickr and Bebo to support the various projects I’m involved with. The ‘Norfolk and Norwich Festival’, ‘Tyneside 100′ and ‘Wysing Arts Centre’ identities I have lovingly crafted may well fall foul of a US decision that breaking the terms and conditions of a social network site can count as unauthorised access, turning what would seem to be at most a civil offence into a criminal act under computer misuse laws.
The concern arises because prosecutors in California have just charged 47 year old Lori Drew under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for creating a fictitious MySpace account, something which many of us have done in the past and which I do all the time when projects I’m working on require a MySpace profile.
Drew allegedly used the account to pretend to be a sixteen year old boy, befriending and then rejecting 13 year old Megan Meier, a friend of her daughter’s, and - it is claimed - provoking Meier to commit suicide. However state officials could find no basis on which to prosecute her in the eighteen months since Meier’s death, until the imaginative use of the computer crime law lead to charges last week.
Now she has been charged with ‘accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress’, because she broke MySpace’s terms of use, which forbid “impersonating or attempting to impersonate another Member, person or entity” and “using any information obtained from the MySpace Services in order to harass, abuse, or harm another person or entity, or attempting to do the same.”
If the case against Drew is proved then she deserves our complete condemnation for bullying a young and vulnerable girl, and I can’t imagine anyone would defend this behaviour or argue that a right to anonymity or pseudonymity extends to adults who abuse young people in this way.
But the prosecution raises wider issues that should concern any computer user, especially those who neither read nor take much notice of the terms and conditions of the sites and services they visit, since it opens up the possibility that acts which we thought were insignificant could be used against us in unexpected ways.
As always, we need to be careful about jumping to the conclusion that this is the death of the web as we know it, that every social network site will start prosecuting its users or that we are all under risk of investigation.
All we have is an indictment, which may be thrown out by the court, claiming that an offence has been committed. The Computer Fraud and Misuse Act is being used because the false identity was used to do something much more serious, and the legal argument is that it can form the basis of a prosecution because it constitutes a ‘tortious act’, but this has yet to be accepted by a judge.
Even if it went all the way through to successful prosecution it doesn’t mean that MySpace could throw recalcitrant users in gaol for signing up with false names. And in most cases like that of Lori Drew there would be another law under which to prosecute anyone who used their online identity for something dodgy.
And yet it is a worrying development, because it creates a degree of uncertainty and may, because of that, have a chilling effect on what we do online. I’ve created new profiles and identities with wild abandon, secure in the knowledge that if Facebook or Bebo or whoever didn’t like what I was doing the most they could do was close my account and perhaps try to stop me opening a new one.
But just as new laws on anti-social behaviour in the UK have created uncertainty about what is acceptable, with tales of people being fined for dropping two crisps that would be eaten by a bird within minutes promoting an atmosphere of careful restraint, any sense that online activity could get someone into serious trouble may limit playfulness and creativity.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston Smith is afraid of the telescreen not because he is being watched constantly but because he might be being watched at any particular moment. As a result he controls himself far more carefully than the Party could ever manage.
We need to be careful that the US legal system, desperate to prosecute someone over the tragic death of a young girl, does not end up establishing a precedent that leads us all to censor ourselves online, just in case.
Bill Thompson - andfinally.com
[Thompson is a UK-based writer and broadcaster. He has a weekly column on the BBC WebWise site, and contributes both on and off-line to The Guardian, The Register and The New Statesman, among others. His “inappropriately-titled ‘billblog’ “appears weekly on BBC News Online in the technology news section.]
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May 24th, 2008 at 11:44 am
The laws are corupted.
There is no law and there is no longer any right side.
We have to fetch our guns.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
“Copying CDs I own to my iPod may - or may not be - illegal, and copying DVDs I own certainly is.”
I wonder, what is the difference and can citizens know about it? I certainly do’t know why I could copy a CD for backup purpose but cannot copy a dvd for the same purpose.
The “can citizens know about it” is extremely important to those of us that don’t care for legal traps nor for dumb judges that parrot “ignorance of the law is no excuse”, the dumbest idea (from idalists, mind you) going around in legal circles.
I hope the reaon is the legal advise given on screen when you see a dvd. Legal advise from non resident lawyers (say inCanada from Amercians) is worthless and legal advise from businesses is lower on the worth scale.
and is t justify?
May 24th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Where’s the harm in making personal backups after they sell us the hardware to do it?
I agree it’s a huge problem when children, and adults, try to get friends online, and it can be disastrous. These “relationships” are usually easily forgotten once broken off because of the lack of physical intimacy. There should rightly be penalties for adults impersonating children or trying to lure them into misconduct.
However there are times when deception is not intended nor for wrong motive. Just one example. Your daughter sets up an account for you on her social network so you can talk to one another on it. You don’t want to give out your personal details, and you could be mistaken for another young person. You may even add content to your page/s that would appeal to her as a young person. She knows who you are and you are not trying to deceive others or lure “friends”, nor do you communicate with others who don’t know you.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
It is fundamental that only governments can make laws (as in, rules that carry punishments for transgression). Neither individuals, nor corporations can make laws, for they have no authority to invoke consequences beyond the revocation of hitherto granted permissions.
If I enter a corporate premises and omit to read the rules on the entrance, I am safe in the knowledge that if I break no REAL laws, the worst punishment they can inflict on me is eviction from the site.
Similarly, if I enter data on a website where I have failed to follow posted rules, it is quite clear that the limit of their right to punish me is to attempt to identify me in the future and deny me access.
Perhaps I deserve a worse punishment if I commit fraud - but it is up to the laws of my country to define the meaning and extent of “fraud”, not the website. If I create two accounts on a private tracker, it is up to the legal system to decide if this is fraud, the website owner cannot point to the “rules” where it says “creating two accounts constitutes fraud”; it’s meaningless, and should not be taken seriously.
May 25th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Okay I admit it. I am neither a seceret agent or a Navy seal. I am not a movie actor, and I am not Oprahs favorite friend! Please don’t take me to court.
May 25th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
You had me convinced!
May 25th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I’m starting to wonder how long it will be before I’m no longer connected to the internet because of fear of reprisals for something posted years ago.
When are the laws that are passed to protect us actually going to be enforced rather than being seen as an inconvenience?
May 25th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
How much can you buy laws for in America? I would like to buy some also and sue some people. Could someone let me know please. I have plenty of other people also interested in buying some laws int the US.