"Cyber fraud" precedent the problem, not harassment precedent
Back the truck up, folks.
Three issues are being conflated here:
1. Should the women be pursued for harassing and abusing this girl? (I think the answer is an obvious "yes", but clearly there is some disagreement - whatever.)
2. Should impersonating another person on the internet be criminalised, as opposed to being a purely civil matter? (Ditto above parenthetic remark.)
3. Should people be at risk for being convicted of "wire fraud" if they give false registration information to a site like Myspace? THIS is the big issue here, the one that sensible civil liberties are worried about. Setting a precedent that this practice is criminal will make many millions of people criminals overnight. I don't know about you, but I don't give my full information to Myspace, Yahoogroups, Facebook, or any other web service, and my choice to do that is fully backed up by government and other organisations who advise people on how to protect themselves online and avoid identity theft. I just gave a pile of false details about my name and my employment situation to the Register. Am I a felon?
If this "cyber fraud" precedent is set, it leaves the door wide open for the powers that be to criminally prosecute anyone they have a mind to. Goodbye dissent and whistle-blowing; if someone doesn't like it, they can simply dob you in for "wire fraud" because you munged your date of birth on Livejournal.
If you think this is a paranoid worst case scenario and "it will never happen", you have an inordinate amount of trust in government who have already shown themselves to be utterly incapable of respecting people's human rights and privacy.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
