After wrapping up his work in the Star Wars saga, Darth Vader settled down in Allentown, Pa. At least, that’s what his MySpace page says.
Actually, there are at least a dozen people on the popular networking site claiming to be the famous villain-turned-hero, which tells us two things: There’s a lot of obvious lying going on and there’s not much being done to discourage it.
Both Facebook and MySpace have rules prohibiting participants from pretending to be someone else. But with droves of users — MySpace alone says it has more than 70 million — neither site is in the business of aggressively policing identity.
And they don’t have to. Sites like MySpace can’t be held liable for the actions of users, according to a ruling last year by a federal judge in Texas. The only time people come close to getting in trouble for using a false identity is when they commit a crime — usually it’s sexual predators stalking kids. But it’s the sex crime that brings charges. Using a fake persona is not a crime.
But soon it could be.
This month, federal officials in Los Angeles revealed they are investigating whether fraud was involved when 13-year-old Megan Meier hanged herself in 2006 after being taunted on MySpace by someone using a fake identity.
The account was linked to a neighboring Dardenne Prairie, Mo., family. Local authorities declined to file charges, saying the circumstances — various people had access to the account — made it difficult to assign blame. Creating the fictional Josh Evans, Megan’s tormentor, was not considered a crime.
The L.A. investigation — in the district that includes Santa Monica, the home of MySpace — is drawing attention across the country and the industry.
At the heart of the Megan Meier incident is a larger issue of honesty on the Internet, and why sitting in front of a computer makes it so easy for some people to stretch the truth, sometimes maliciously.
“It’s just so much easier to pretend to be someone else online. People are very eager to try it out,” said David Whittier, a professor at Boston University’s School of Education. “There’s really nothing wrong with that. In a way, it’s a wonderful thing.”
Unless, he said, it goes too far or is done to hurt someone, as in the Megan Meier case.
“There should be an appropriate penalty for what these people did,” Whittier said. “I’m hoping our civilized societies will work together to develop laws and guidelines to make cyberspace more civilized.”
But that’s where it gets sticky, some experts say. How do you regulate the Internet — a medium that promotes the quick flow of ideas of information — without strangling its creativity?
Catherine Dwyer, a professor at Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, doesn’t think it can be done.
Like others, she doubts the Internet will ever be able to guarantee the person on the other end of your digital line is who they say they are. Imagine, she said, the difficulties of forcing every online user to prove their identity when signing up for sites like MySpace.
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