Social network sites and inaccurate profiles - fraudulent behaviour?

This is a story from the US about a girl who killed herself after being dumped by her online boyfriend. It turns out the boyfriend wasn't a boy but the mother of a former friend of the girl - posing as a boy.

MySpace is domiciled in California, so an LA court has jurisdiction (MySpace being the victim in the case), and the prosecutors are looking for any law that was broken by the perp (heh, it's a US case so I'm using the appropriate lingo).

It seems the most likely action would be one for fraud - on the basis that the former friend's mother acted fraudulently towards MySpace in setting up an account with false details. If succesful it could ultimately lead to former friend's mother being responsible for girl's death. Whilst I seriously doubt it would get that far, it would be interesting to see if any charges are actually made - if there are I'll certainly be trying to remember to keep an eye on the trial....

And on a non-legal note, I was chatting to my mother last night and she was talking about MyFace. Which I initially thought was a Spoonerism, but turns out not to be.

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Update -

I have found a different report which contains more details on the social aspects, but also explains how MySpace would be the victim. And here's the link.

Bloody First Great Western

Is the sole train operator which goes to Town where I work, and it is unmitigated pants.

On 1 January the train fare went up by over 8% for my route. Whilst high, this is not the highest increase Frantically Grabbing Wonga has implemented; London to Maidenhead is apparently so expensive that a passenger group ,"More Trains Less Strain", has claimed that it is cheaper to buddy-up and catch a cab between the two locations (following a 9.65% increase in fares) (story in Times Online).

If the FGW service was better than average, hell - even just bog-standard average, that would be one thing. However, FGW is the worst performing British train service and nearly one in five trains is late. That means twice a week my train will not arrive on time. On my outbound journey I take two tube lines, a FGW train, then a bus. On my inbound journey, the same in reverse. Since the new year my average commute has jumped to three hours daily. In the interests of fairness I should point out that the delay isn't always train related - if the trains are running OK then there's always the possibility of signal problems or suspended services on one of the tube lines that I also use.

Today the results of an RMT strike ballot have been published. Unsurprisingly the results are overwhelmingly in favour of a strike. The reason is that FGW wants to try to operate a commercial (ha!) seven-day service (bless) but the FGW guards don't want to work Sundays. The RMT union position is that "guards can choose not to attend on Sundays" (in the words of a Worst Great Western rep).

It is likely there will be some buggering around with the trains then and it could be as early as next week. It might be they call a strike, or take some action "short of strike" which was apparently one of the options in the ballot of RMT's FGW members. Whichever day it is, I'll work at home.

Unless it's after next Thursday because that's when we get our new car.

year and a day rule

This rule set out that if you injured someone and they died in excess of a year and a day after the injuries were inflicted you couldn't be charged with murder, and it was abolished over ten years ago.

Considering the year and a day rule came into force initially in the thirteenth century I feel it showed an impressive grasp of remoteness of causation. Similarly, I felt that Michael Howard was correct in repealing it, given the advances of modern science. I'll leave for another time the suggestion that it should be re-introduced with an amendment to the effect that if the victim survives a year and a day following the injury in an NHS establishment without experiencing complications related to the contraction of a superbug in hospital then the perpetrator can't be charged because the victim is clearly uncommonly lucky (and should buy some lotto tickets pronto).

In the first few days of law school, coming up on ten years ago, we had an exercise in legal reading involving a snippet of legislation related to this rule. We had to work out what the rule actually meant and whether it was still in force or not. I occasionally remember how I felt, sat in our lecture theatre one morning (which was itself noteworthy), eager and full of optimism and enthusiasm about being a lawyer. I sometimes wish all the legislation I had to read was that straightforward.

Recently the BBC published an article which included a list of cases where the abolition of the rule has led to people being charged and convicted of murder since the abolition of the law in 1996.

Rights of owls and pussycats remain unaffected. Relief all around!

What am I?

This week I have been expected to be part clairvoyant with advanced telekinetic skills and the ability to see through walls. I have also, on occasion, been expected to be able to perform short- and long-haul time travel. I am alternately expected to be an idiot who can't do anything, and then conversely expected to perform minor miracles with little recognition.

This must stop!

I mean, I haven't even started revising for my advanced paper in mindreading, and my dissertation on putting the monkey on someone else's back is about three weeks overdue.

To top it all, my guitar hero skills are not developing in accordance with standard procedure.

Ceiling Cat's bible

The bible according to Ceiling Cat. I found a link to it on a random web forum, read selected highlights and greatly enjoyed.

It's Molesworth meets txtspk meets ... um ... cat.

And it looks like the whole bible (plus the Christian New Testament) is on there.

Did you know Ronald Searle also created the St. Trinian's cartoons - and that he illustrated one of Archer's recent publications? I didn't either.

Is -7 a lower number than -5?

I found this article recently. It's a bit of a shocker. A company which makes scratch-cards had an idea - if the scratcher reveals a lower number than the number on the front panel, the punter wins. The cards were withdrawn because too many people displayed a complete lack of knowledge of maths and dealt with the "-" sign in front of a number as entirely optional; considering it didn't add anything to the meaning.

Some woman in Manchester was even happy to go on the record, under her own name, after confirming she had no GCSE in Maths, and say: "the card doesn't say to look for a colder or warmer temperature, it says to look for a higher or lower number".

I propose people who don't get negative numbers are sent to Siberia to test their theory that -40 is in fact warmer than -2; it being a higher number and all.

But at that point I suspect the C/F discussion would come up, swiftly followed by the soft "pfffft" as the hamster in the head stops pedalling.

Property law

I found this whilst browsing a website run by the lawbitches (3Ls in the US). Apparently the kid shot his real estate finance text book. One of the co-authors made a crack about his scholarship being riddled with holes which did make me chuckle. The article got me wondering what real estate finance is.

In the UK real estate is Property. Over here you do property in your undergraduate classes (or on the CPE) and learn all about bona fide purchasers for value without notice (and a mere eight years later you stun your friends with your ability to remember a phrase you've not used since ... um ... finishing the exam in June '99). Then on the LPC course, where you learn all about the varying degrees of durability of the different types of post-it notes, you study property again. Not the letter of the law again, but how to sell or buy a residence; on a course called Conveyancing. That does involve some level of "finance" in that you have to work out how much SDLT would be payable on a residence and how much your client needs to remit to your [firm's/ Swiss numbered] bank account, which is harder than it sounds but probably wouldn't merit an entire course to itself, and certainly not an entire book!

I have been dabbling in property law recently. I have come to the conclusion that in practice property law and property lawyers are a very distinct breed.

Generally they are perceived as working the shortest hours of any specialism, except on corporate transactions when they are sometimes required to work past 6pm (ok, maybe tax lawyers work short hours too but they are usually kept in a secure unit away from the rest of the lawyers, and certainly a long way from the clients). Their offices sport the occasional pile of documents (nothing odd there TBH), some clearly old and crumbly and emitting odours more suited to a damp library. I know most lawyers probably don't work in a paperless environment, but even a badly organised non-property lawyer is unlikely to have gently rotting paper on her desk.*

Apart from having shorter days and less fire-proof offices than those flashy corporate types, they also have different working practices. Property lawyers I know exchange letters rather than email. They'll send hard copies of documents by post or DX to the Other Side, who will write all over the document and SEND IT BACK for the originator of the document to organise the typing up! When I asked for word documents by email it was as if I'd said women should have the vote or something. When do these guys live? Surely I wasn't the first person to ask for word documents by email? I suppose it does make some sense to have the document controlled by one person, and the idea of scrawling all over a document and putting it in an envelope does sound fantastically easy. I just don't think I can afford to work at such a slow pace.

So, in a nutshell - property law can be quite painfully archaic. As soon as they get rid of Unregistered Land the better. Apart from that - the hours, the ability to just scribble all over a document and then post it back to the sender, and the possibility that you might be required to colour in a plot on a Land Registry plan in a fetching shade of red* - I think I'm envious.

* facts may be slightly exaggerated to suit my purpose

What happened?

The bottom seems to have fallen out of my social life. I worked an entire weekend recently (so did Mr. W), I'm spending the weeks here in the flat whilst Mr. W works his fingers to the bone in [insert European city of choice], and last week I raced home from work three days of the four I worked (yay cricket!) just to get online and send out revised drafts of documents before American close of play. At least Mr. W wasn't here last week, otherwise I would have been annoyed at the way work was eating into my social time.

I was carting all of the recycling (mainly glass bottles *hic*) to the recycling area behind the flat at about 2000 this evening and it suddenly hit me that I should have arranged to go out after work - or even, that having got home before 2000 I should have called up a friend and arranged an impromptu get-together; it's not like everyone lives miles away, or even that eight pm is particularly late to start an evening's revellry. I got home from work unexpectedly early and didn't even take advantage of it - the one opportunity in the past three weeks and I didn't carpe the diem. How sad.

It's not as if I had something great planned for the evening that I couldn't bin at a moment's notice, having had the good fortune to get out of work on time. I was supposed to be spending time this evening tidying the junk on my desk. Step one was to find the desk in the first place. Step two was to list all the junk I need to sell on ebay. Step three was to do all of my filing, and step four (well really step three bee) was to dispose of the resulting mountain of paper that always forms when I do my filing. I had everything planned out. How boring is that. A beer, a meal (Mr. W's away so I was hankering after a pizza), and a methodical search for the desk (I know it's in the study but it's hiding).

Instead I spent the first part of the evening eating, the second part working out that the swishing sound when I walk is actually my bum dragging on the floor. The third part was spent calling a few friends (who I should have called earlier and just gone out and met up with) to moan about said bum issues.

So I'm off to bed, me and my saggy bum, in the hope that a good night's sleep will shrink the backside that is fast requiring its own postcode. Ah, the power of positive thought.