[News] Update On Teen Suicide

I just happened across some new information for the case I had discussed last week regarding a young teen girl that committed suicide based because of a series of events in which the mother, her daughter and an employee of the mother pretended to be a young boy and "trick" the teen into revealing information pertaining to the woman's daughter.

The update is that Lori Drew (the mother) is near verdict for conspiracy and three counts of computer-fraud charges that pertain to Megan Meier's (the deceased) subsequent death due to the online bullying (cyberbullying). I'm interested to see how they plan on using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to prosecute this... Seeing as it's primary source and cause is for computer hacking. It seems that as our society becomes more and more entwined with the Internet in general we are going to have to incorporate some sort of "policing" on the Internet. This is going to be a difficult task, for sure, and much of the anonymous freedom that we enjoy now will still remain as a whole; however, the IT industry has one thing going for it that will allow this anonymous freedom (which I support with every fiber of my being) to remain. There are very few of us that can REALLY say we are anonymous while on the Internet. And there is hardly a trail of proxies that can TRULY hide who you are.

Here's to justice: I hope she gets convicted on all four cases simply due to the fact that she must pay her dues for the injustice she caused by pushing the girl to the edge and then poking and prodding her until she jumped. In most cases (as mentioned in my previous blog), I would pass this up as a poor story of a girl who didn't deserve it. It grabbed my attention due to the blatant disregard of responsibility of what the woman did. The lawyers pointed fingers at the mother of the deceased as well as Lori Drew deciding to tell the young girl "The world would be a better place without you."

I guess the true moral to this story is that although you think you know someone you meet on the internet and you talk to them on the phone, you don't know who the hell they are. Wait. No. That's not it... How about this one: Don't treat others like crap on the internet simply because you are hiding behind a false veil of anonymity. Too many "Internet Tough Guys" and "Internet Geniuses" exist on the Internet nowadays.

Take care.

[Environment] Carrotmob - Potential to change the world as we know it?

A friend found this and sent it to me today. It's 7 months old, but it's never too late to spread the word about the ideology behind the technique. I think that this was a wonderful experiment.

They doubled the prediction of the store manager, and tripled the normal income for an entire weekend in just 3 hours. Incentive for businesses to change the way they do business as a whole. Great idea. Great information. Spread the wealth of knowledge!



If you are interested in Carrotmob and what they do, visit carrotmob.org.

I'll hopefully be posting another regular entry within the week (holidays!) on both of the blogs.

Take care.