Privacy Working Group

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Thursday threw out the conviction of a Missouri woman on charges of computer fraud for her role in creating a false MySpace account to dupe a teenager, who later committed suicide.

The judge, George H. Wu, said that he was tentatively acquitting the woman, Lori Drew, of misdemeanor counts of gaining access to computers without authorization and that the ruling would be final when he issued his written decision.

In November, a federal jury here convicted Ms. Drew of three misdemeanor charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal law intended to combat computer crimes. Legal experts followed the case closely, saying it was the first time the statute had been used to prosecute a patron of a social networking site for abuses of the site.

But on Thursday, Judge Wu said the federal statute was too “vague” when applied in this case and that were he to allow Ms. Drew’s conviction to stand, “one could literally prosecute anyone who violates a terms of service agreement” in any way.

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T. LOUIS —  A 21-year-old woman accused of sending a vulgar text message to a 17-year-old girl is one of the first cases brought under a law against cyberbullying spurred by the suicide of a teenage girl following cruel messages on the Internet.

The 2006 death of 13-year-old Megan Meier prompted Missouri lawmakers to update state harassment law earlier this year so that it now covers bullying and stalking done through electronic media, like e-mails or text messages.

A handful of cases related to electronic communication have been filed statewide since the law took effect Aug. 28. Prosecutors do not track harassment cases based on the type of communication method used, so could not provide an exact count in recent days of how many people have been charged because of the new provisions.

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If your teenager or pre-teen were being harassed or bullied on-line, would he or she tell you?

Cyberbullying is a growing problem, as reported in today’s “Work & Family” column. More than one in five students said in a study by Clemson University researchers that they’ve either been victims of on-line harassment, have been the bullies themselves, or in some cases played both the bully and victim roles.

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Is lying about one’s identity on the Internet now a crime?

The verdict Wednesday in the MySpace cyberbullying case raised a variety of questions about the terms that users agree to when they log on to Web sites.

The defendant in the case, a Missouri woman, was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles on three misdemeanor counts of computer fraud for having misrepresented herself on the popular social network MySpace. The woman, Lori Drew, posed as a teenage boy in using the account to send first friendly and then menacing messages to Megan Meier, 13, who killed herself shortly after receiving a message in October 2006 that said in part, “The world would be a better place without you.”

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