Better read those Terms of Use!!

This may not be entirely applicable to politics, but a case back in 2006 of a woman who impersonated a fictional 13 year-old boy on MySpace causing a young-girl to commit suicide was recently (in the last few months) resolved. The verdict "expands the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was passed in 1986 as a tool against hackers, to include social networking Web sites."

Here is a synopsis of the case, disturbing really: "Drew, 49, of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., posed as a teenage boy, 'Josh Evans,' using a MySpace account to send romantic, then disturbing, messages to one of her daughter's classmates, 13-year-old Megan Meier. Meier thought she was messaging with a new, good-looking boy in town. As the New Yorker magazine said in a January article about the case: 'Megan and her peers carried on an online social life that was more mercurial, and perhaps more crucial to their sense of status and acceptance, than the one they inhabited in the flesh.' Meier, who suffered from depression, killed herself in October 2006 soon after reading a message from Drew's account that said: 'The world would be a better place without you.'"

So what does this mean for sites like WikiLeaks, the Huffington Post and other non-traditional news sites that are not always 100% accurate? What does it mean for bloggers who post false information? It means, you could potentially, if this law is expanded even more, be held criminally responsible for your words. Perhaps this will have an effect on future elections? (There, I tied it in.. ) :)