News for the Week of May 18, 2008
In tech news this week, two key court decisions reflect a shift in US thinking about social networking sites' role in bad behavior online...
Social Web's role
Two recent federal court decisions are signs of growing recognition in US society that social-networking sites are not the cause of behavior in them which sometimes leads to tragic results. They're just another "place" where the behavior occurs. Where the confusion lies is in the role that the social Web does play. It can have the effect of amplifying and perpetuating the impact of content and speech on it, so responsible social-networking companies (and mobile carriers, virtual worlds, multiplayer games and communities) have the responsibility to help mitigate that behavior by educating the public at the preventive end and supporting parents, schools, and law enforcement at the remedial end, after things happen.
In the first case, existing law is being unprecedentedly applied in a way that puts the public focus on sites' terms of service as, basically, a set of user safety regs that need to be observed by all as a protection to all. In the second case, the decision by a federal appeals court to reaffirm a law that puts social-networking sites in the same category as telephone companies, as communication pipelines or venues, reaffirms the concept that on Web sites, too, people, not so much the places where people interact, are accountable for people's interactions. Given the age of the child involved, this case too puts the spotlight on site terms of service.
Indictment in Megan Meier case
The first case involves Lori Drew, the mother who allegedly helped create a fictitious MySpace profile that led to 13-year-old Megan Meier's suicide has been indicted. She has been "charged with conspiracy and fraudulently gaining access to someone else's computer" by a federal grand jury. Drew and some of Megan's peers had set up the profile of a fictitious 16-year-old boy and, through it, developed a relationship between the "boy" and Megan, who her family said had been treated for attention deficit disorder and depression. The profile's creators carried on the "relationship" for months, then faked the "boy's" breakup with Megan, leading to her suicide. Investigators in Missouri, where all this occurred, couldn't find a state law to apply to the case. Later, "federal prosecutors in Los Angeles launched a grand jury investigation ... to determine whether Ms. Drew or others defrauded Beverly Hills-based MySpace by providing false information to the site," the Associated Press reports, describing an unprecedented way of applying the law ("both Megan and MySpace are named as victims in the case, US Attorney Thomas O'Brien" told the AP).
This is a case and an approach to watch going forward, because in effect it adds "teeth" to social-networking sites' terms of service, which both parents and teens need to be aware of and which sites need to enforce.
Court rejects family's suit against MySpace
In the second case, a federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of a Texas family's $30 million sexual-assault case against MySpace. The court ruled that the Communications Decency Act of 1996 "bars such lawsuits against Web-based services like MySpace," the Associated Press reports. The case was dismissed by a federal court in Austin last year. The girl had created a profile on MySpace when she was below the site's minimum age of 14 but characterized herself as 18 and - after meeting a 19-year-old man who apparently got her phone number by claiming he was a high school football player - said she was assaulted by him after she went out on a date with him in 2006 (my original item on this was "Teen sues MySpace").
In other news...
- Supreme Court upholds PROTECT Act. In a 7 to 2 vote, the US Supreme Court upheld "an expansive federal law that punishes people who peddle or seek child pornography, saying Congress's remedy for a growing problem on the Internet does not violate free-speech guarantees," the Washington Post reports. "PROTECT" stands for Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today, and the law not only makes the exchange of child-abuse images illegal but also "any attempt to convince another person that child pornography is available," the Post adds, so it even covers solicitations that don't contain images. Even though critics say the law is "overly broad," this is really good. See why in the Post article or coverage at the New York Times.
- Videogame fitness training? Now there's a concept: a videogame that aims to get people in shape. People of all ages to get in shape. This is great for kids whose motivation for doing things like learning or getting active is helped by videogame play. But there are qualifications, reports ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid at CBSNEWS.com. "The Wii Fit screen recommends that you achieve a BMI [body mass index] of 22 but fails to point out that BMI doesn't distinguish body fat from muscle mass. Based on their BMIs, Barry Bonds and Arnold Schwarzenegger would be considered obese." But then there's the balance board combined with the Wii controller's motion-sensing capability. "In addition to weighing you, the balance board can help determine your posture and center of gravity based on the way you're standing on it," and these help in determining fitness too. The $89.99 game and accessory offer various ways to "play": aerobics, yoga, strength training, and balancing games. All pretty good, Larry says, but - as with any form of dieting or fitness training, the key is the will to stick with it, and even the Wii can't provide that. Even so, it helps when the process is fun.
- Online aliases: The new privacy. Young people are increasingly finding the need to put up firewalls between private and public online lives. They're "assuming online aliases" on social-networking sites "to avoid the prying eyes of parents, college recruiters, potential employers, and other overly interested strangers," the Washington Post reports. "They are also being more selective in who they allow in as 'friends' by paring back the size of their social circles" or friend lists. As well, they're increasingly fictionalizing parts of their profile and blog personas so associations with their real-life identities aren't as quickly or easily made. All this is good. It's a sign that teens have various means of self-protection online - not just social sites' privacy features. It's also a sign young people are employing critical thinking at a time when it has never been needed more. Critical thinking is the sort of "filter" that can only improve, and it goes with them everywhere, offline as well as online!
- UK leads Europe in social networking. This does not surprise, given Ofcom's recent finding that 49% of the UK's 8-to-17-year-olds have an online profile (see a related link with this feature). But it's further confirmation that, as The Guardian put it, Britons are "addicted to social networking." Social-networking sites "reached 9.6 million users in the UK in 2007, according to a new report from Datamonitor," according to this Guardian blog post. "This puts it ahead of bigger countries, including France with 8.9 million and Germany with 8.6 million. Spain is in fourth place with just 2.9 million." WebProNews led with the Datamonitor finding that "close to half of all people in the UK will be members of a social-networking site within four years."
