Prosecutors argued that Drew could be charged because she had accessed MySpace’s servers maliciously because she violated their terms of service when she created a fake MySpace account.
Internet Orgs Weigh in on Lori Drew Prosecution | PBS
I agree with the collection of Internet Law groups that this is a bad, bad prosecution. Lori Drew is that awful woman who made a fake Myspace account and taunted her already suicidal neighbor’s daughter.The daughter killed herself.
But Drew is being charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The theory is that she violated MySpace’s TOS by creating a “fraudulent” account with a fake identity. Thus she’s being charged under an anti-hacking law. If found guilty, this woman could go to jail for violations of boiler-plate terms of service. The degree to which those terms of service are civilly enforceable is debatable. But adding criminal liability for them would be a disgrace.
I sometimes think that the pressures of a 24-hour news cycle lead to premature obituaries for various programs. We get narratives like this:
Day 1: Should we have a bailout?
Day 2: We have a bailout!
Day 3: Some celebrity kicked a puppy!
Day 4: Why didn’t the bailout work?
We saw the same thing with the surge. While the news is more or less instant, actually implementing things takes a while. And getting a meaningful result takes even longer. There is a lot of impatience.
Southpol quotes Rob Horning, asking if Obama’s vision of post-partisan politics doesn’t amount to the exploitation of brand identification:
What Obama’s team seems to want to do is establish Obama as an untarnishable brand, anchored in images of youth and progress (hence YouTube), that can then be used to win approval for policies without having to convince people of their merits. Participating in politics tends to make people uncomfortable, and few people do it at any level beyond voting. It involves compromise and confrontation and a willingness to be reminded again and again that reality falls short of ideals. But people love participating in brands—no compromise necessary there, as the engagement takes place on the fantasy level and consists of pure vicarious pleasure. If we become invested in brand Obama, we will end up absorbing the progressive ideology he may espouse as a kind of by-product. And this can then inform the polls that inform political decisionmaking by legislators.
Southpol adds,
This is provocative and I think a lot of folks have similar reservations about the Obaman enterprise.
I don’t see how the Obama team’s image crafting is anything new. Putting an address on YouTube is novel—though not exceptionally innovative. Apparently talking about things as “brands” is the new way “2.0”. Isn’t a brand any different than a reputation? Is the Obama team’s efforts to control or shape that reputation any different than McCain, Inc.’s attempt to create the “noble veteran” or Clinton, Inc.’s attempt to create the “experienced fighter”? If anything, Obama offered more concrete substance most of the other options. McCain was a POW. Rudy 9/11. Edward’s father was a millworker. Drill, baby, drill! Or remember identity politics?
Or is it that Obama has appealed to younger people who, being under the age of 35, must only be interested in frivolous, youthy things? Or perhaps YouTube works as a cost-effective way to distribute a three-minute argument on extending unemployment insurance as a way to stimulate the economy?
If reports are to be belived, Obama is shaping a Lincolnesque “team of rivals” in his cabinet. If Clinton is Secretary of State and at least one Republican is Secretary of Something That Hopefully Isn’t Defense, he’ll get it. This is a sharp break from how he ran his campaign. While both the Clinton and McCain campaigns were plagued by in-fighting, Obama’s campaign (apparently) went very, very smoothly. He didn’t have a lot of patience for petty rivalry. And that approach worked well, at least for the campaign.
Is this Team of Rivals thing a good idea? On one hand, we can’t exactly afford an ineffective administration gridlocked by disagreement. On the other hand, a Team of Yesmen and an unwillingness to tolerate dissent is what got us into this situation. (Or perhaps it was a Team of Incompetent Political Toadies.) Does Obama have the leadership ability to effectively direct such a powerful (and potentially self-interested) crew?
As usual, I think Obama is making the right move. There is some risk—but the risk of not having credible dissent is even higher. And putting a hatchet man like Rahm Emmanuel as the Chief of Staff could perhaps help the rivalries to stay in their appropriate places. Still, it’s definitely a change from the campaign.
I’m streaming the auto bailout hearings from CNN.com. I’m not particularly sold on this bailout yet. I’m also not sold on my own Senators.
The auto executives are talking about how much they expect to reduce their “cash burn” next year. They should probably have come up with a euphemism for that. I suggest monetary ignition.
kylebingman quotes Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, “Lecture XXX,” Lectures On The Essence Of Religion
“…God is nothing other than the abstracted, phantasmagoric essence of man and nature, hypostatised by the imagination; hence theism sacrifices the real life and nature of things and of men to a being who is a mere product of thought and imagination. Thus atheism is positive and affirmative; it gives back to nature and mankind the dignity of which theism has despoiled them; it restores life to nature and mankind, which theism had drained of their best powers. God, as we have seen, is jealous of nature and man; He wants man to honour, love, and serve Him alone; He wants everything else to be nothing and Himself alone to be something; in other words, theism is jealous of man and the world and begrudges them any good. Envy, ill will, and jealousy are destructive, negative passions. Atheism, on the other hand, is liberal, open-handed, open-minded; an atheist acknowledges every being’s will and talent; his heart delights in the beauty of nature and the virtue of man: joy and love do not destroy, they are life-giving, affirmative.”
I’m fascinated by this atheistic description of God. On one hand, there is the denial of God’s existance. On the other, there is the elaboration of the qualities and desires of God, as if to construct something worth denying. How can Feuerbach explain that God is an extension of human thought, reject God as jealous and destructive, then claim to delight in the beauty of that same thought?
I think Feuerbach has it backwards. God is not the product of our imagination. Rather, we are the creation of a divine imagination, breathed to life by divine love. A virtue of theism is not jealousy but humility. When God is the fount of meaning reality and we are but beloved shadows, self-worship may not be obscene—but is certainly absurd. The atheist is right to rejoice in the reflected beauty of nature and the reflected virtue of man—but wrong to assume they are self-contained and self-produced.
I watched the Senate hearing on the auto industry bailout—and I’ve got to say, it doesn’t look likely that it will happen. Chris Dodd, the chairman, closed the session by saying that he thought it was going to be tough to get the votes—but if the executives of the corporations voluntarily and immediately made some sacrifices on the executive compensation front, the package would be a lot easier to sell to constituents.
