Overturn MySpace verdict?

Sounds like a good bet. At least that's the hope among some lawyer/pundits who are up in arms over last week's misdemeanor convictions against Lori Drew in the MySpace suicide case. She’s the one who used a fictitious MySpace account to harass a teenage girl, who later hanged herself after finding out that the fictitious boy Drew created had dumped her. "I don't think it's overstating it a bit to say that unless this case is overturned, it is time to get off the internet completely, because it will have become too risky to use a computer," writes Groklaw's Pamela Jones. From Wired.com (hat tip Law Blog):

Drew was convicted of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the federal anti-hacking law. Under the prosecutor's novel interpretation of the CFAA, endorsed by the jury, Drew obtained unauthorized access to MySpace's computers by violating the site's terms of service, even though Drew never read those terms. In particular, the jury concluded that Drew's accomplices supplied false information to MySpace by establishing an account for a nonexistent 16-year-old boy.

[CUT]

It's possible that the case might never reach appeal. Judge George Wu, who presided over the case in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, is still entertaining a motion for a directed acquittal, which was filed by Drew's defense attorney H. Dean Steward after the prosecution rested its case more than a week ago. Steward asked Wu for a judgment of acquittal based on the defense's view that the prosecution failed to prove that Drew knew the MySpace terms of service existed, and that she knew what they said and intentionally violated them. Wu decided to postpone ruling on the motion.