TechWag

A Federal grand jury has taken an interest in the Megan Meier MySpace Suicide case and has issued a subpoena to MySpace seeking information. The Federal government has often taken on cases where there were no local state laws, or federal laws can be used where there are no state laws. The subpoena centers in the idea of defrauding MySpace by having knowledge of a second account on MySpace. Something that Lori Drew has often admitted she knew about.

Federal prosecutors are considering charging a mother in the girl’s neighborhood with defrauding MySpace by creating a false account that she, her daughter and a teenage employee used to fool 13-year-old Megan Meier into believing she was communicating with a 16-year-old boy, the Los Angeles Times said on its Web site, citing unidentified sources. Source: MSNBC

The interesting part of this is the “first amendment” implications, in that what is and what is not protected speech. This could end up being a very important case for Web 2.0 and lay to rest a number of nagging issues for bloggers and other people. If found culpable, this would have a far ranging effect on how people interact on the Internet, and what penalties Trolls might face if they drive someone to do something or are contributory in someone doing something stupid.

We have dealt with Trolls in the past, and there is a lot of information on how to handle trolls. What will be problematic is track, trace, and proof of badness in some ways, and proof that the behavior of a troll on the Internet lead to something happening that was dangerous or life threatening. With the MySpace Suicide case the outcome was obvious, in the case of Kathy Sierra, the outcome was not so obvious (other than Kathy’s continued silence).

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