2 key US court actions involving MySpace

Two recent federal court actions 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 1) educating the public at the preventive end and 2) 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. Here are the cases:

1. Indictment in Megan Meier case

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. [Earlier coverage: "Extreme cyberbullying: US case comes to light" and "Missouri cyberbullying: Case not closed."]

2. Court rejects family’s suit against MySpace

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 (see this item). 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").

Social Web: Positive side effect

What Sean Blagsvedt found after he was sent back to India by Microsoft to establish its research office there, was that poverty-level Indians needed a LinkedIn.com, he told the New York Times reports. He research found that "many poor Indians in dead-end jobs remain in poverty not because there are no better jobs, but because they lack the connections to find them." So he left Microsoft to found Babajob.com, which "seeks to bring the social-networking revolution popularized by Facebook and MySpace to people who do not even have computers - the world’s poor." This inspiring piece leads with the story of house painter Manohar Lakshmipathi, who doesn't own a computer and is of course not allowed to touch his clients' computers. So Babajob sat him down at a desk and had him dictate his date of birth, phone number and work history to a secretary, took a picture of him, and uploaded it all to his profile on Babajob - "just one example of an unanticipated byproduct of the outsourcing boom: many of the hundreds of multinationals and hundreds of thousands of technology workers who are working here are turning their talents to fighting the grinding poverty that surrounds them."

Social networking's impact on RL

How is online social networking changing socializing in real life? It's a very interesting question that people - from researchers to social networkers themselves - are beginning to look into. For one thing, UK professors have found, "online social networks tend to be far larger than their real-life counterparts," Science Daily reports - "the average person has a social network of around 150 friends, ranging from very close friends to casual acquaintances." There are as many insights to be gained, too, from this blog post by a 23-year-old social networker who has thought a lot about how social networking has affected his life and the lives of his fellow social-Web users: "5 observations of how social networking (online) has changed social networking (offline)." His first observation, "Social networking as a pre-screening tool," seems to answer a question Prof. Will Reader at Sheffield Hallam University took to his research: "Making new friends involves an investment by committing time and energy to another person in the hope that they will provide reciprocal benefits in the future. Dr. Reader and his colleagues wondered whether online networks are somehow reducing the investment necessary to make new friends by lowering the perceived risk." Meanwhile, a media studies class at Pitzer College in southern California will be studying YouTube, looking at such things as "the role of 'corporate-sponsored democratic media expression'," its professor told the Associated Press.