How far is too far?

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It was an ugly day for St. Louis, and for social networking when news broke last Winter of a teenage girl who committed suicide, allegedly due to a MySpace hoax by a neighbor's mom.

This afternoon that mom, Lori Drew, was indicted for that ruse, where she's accused of posing as a sixteen year old boy, then breaking 13 year old Megan Meier's heart.

The charges, filed by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles (the home of MySpace) raise all sorts of questions. Should she be held criminally responsible if she did this? Certainly no believes she intended for that little girl to kill herself. Drew's actions, if this is true, were heartless, mean, and immature, but were they criminal?

If Drew gets the book thrown at her, what does that mean for the world of social networking? Do I have to worry that every blog I write might drive someone to suicide? Will you think twice about putting inside jokes on your MySpace or Facebook pages for fear they might be taken the wrong way by someone?

It would be a shame if such a chilling effect took hold. Personally, I would hate for the rest of the country to remember a really stupid woman in St. Louis as being the cause of it. What do you think?