Reputation.com has been covering the Lori Drew/Megan Meier case for some time now, keeping up with the latest developments. First there was the discovery that Ms. Drew was involved, then the filing of the suit in Los Angeles, and now it seems that Lori Drew is going to trial for allegedly participating in the acts that led young Megan Meier to kill herself.

On Friday last week Sarah Drew, Lori’s daughter, took the stand in Los Angeles to defend what her mother may or may not have done with connection to the Meier case. According to the testimony, Sarah indicated that her mother Lori approved of the creation of a fake MySpace account with the intention to discover if Megan Meier was spreading rumors about her daughter.

Meier would eventually receive a message from the fake account (which was set up purporting to be that of a cute young boy) telling her that the world would be better off if she were dead. Megan hanged herself shortly after receiving that message, but according to Sarah her mother had instructed a business assistant, Ashley Grills, to close the MySpace account approximately two weeks prior. While under cross-examination by U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien Sarah admitted that Megan had spoken of suicide to her on at least two occasions, but that she did not tell anyone. “She was like, I don’t know if I could live anymore,” she said of one instance. “I told her not to do it.”

Sarah Drew would go on to state that she never witnessed her mother using the fake MySpace account, statements that directly contradict what Grills has alleged: that she saw Lori Drew, on at least one occasion, type a message from the fake account to Megan Meier.

Lori Drew currently faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the charges of conspiracy and accessing computers without authorization. She has entered a plea of not guilty in what legal scholars are classifying as the first cyber-bullying trial in American jurisprudence.

The Vice President of customer care at MySpace, Jae Sung, testified of MySpace that the site requires users to check a box that indicates a user’s agreement to the rules prohibiting acts like online harassment. The testimony goes to the heart of the prosecution’s argument that Drew violated MySpace terms of service by setting up a fake account and harassing Megan. According to Sung “impostor profiles” such as the account that Drew created in this case are not allowed under MySpace guidelines.

“What happens when they are found?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause asked.

“We generally delete those profiles,” Sung said.

Citing the over 400 million profiles live on MySpace, Sung said that it is difficult to enforce the service rules.

Wired and Fox News are both reporting, that a man who left his iPhone at a McDonald’s is suing after naked photos of his wife were allegedly posted online.

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In the suit, [the man] said he left his phone at a McDonald’s location in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and that a manager promised the phone was secured for him to retrieve it. After picking up his iPhone, photos of [the mans's] wife . . . made their way onto a web site — along with her name, address and contact information, the suit claims.

It is clear that privacy and reputation issues are important in the digital age.

Did you hear the one about how Sarah Palin didn’t know if Africa was a continent or a country? Well, it turns out the entire story was an elaborate hoax that fooled bloggers and the MSM alike. The International Herald Tribune has more on this story of fake news, sham internet identities and a voracious media clammering for the latest scoop.

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

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Eisenstadt became an adviser to Senator John McCain and got a blog, updated occasionally with comments claiming insider knowledge, and other bloggers began quoting and linking to it. It mixed weird-but-true items with false ones that were plausible, if just barely.

The inventors fabricated the Harding Institute, named for one of the most scorned presidents, and made Eisenstadt a senior fellow.

It didn’t hurt that a man named Michael Eisenstadt is a real expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is quoted in the mainstream media. The real Eisenstadt said in an interview that he was only dimly aware of the fake one, and that his main concern was that people understood that “I had nothing to do with this.”

Before long Gorlin and Mirvish had produced a short documentary on Martin Eisenstadt, supposedly for the BBC, posted in several parts on YouTube.

The entire tale shows the fluid nature of identity online. Also, if Sarah Palin is really looking to run in 2012, Reputation.com would be happy to help her with her Reputation Management.

According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, suicide is “the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds”. Claiming thousands of lives each year, suicide has been called an “epidemic” by some youth health professionals and proves to be a difficult problem to manage.

So, what makes the story of 19-year-old Abraham Briggs unique? At approximately 3 AM early Wednesday morning, the Florida teen overdosed on a combination opiates and benzodiazepine to a live audience of 185 viewers at the website Justin.tv.

According to reports, Briggs announced his intent in a forum at bodybuilding.com which subsequently linked to the webcast. While some viewers pondered Briggs’ seriousness, others jokingly encouraged his actions. It wasn’t until 12 hours later that police received a tip to check on the young man. By then, it was too late.

While it is arguable that the actions of the viewers had any real effect on this young man’s decision to end his life (his parents have acknowledged that he suffered from bipolar disorder) it is nevertheless sad to observe such callousness on display. Even after it was clear that Briggs had died, the comments continued with people writing things like “LOL” and “OMFG”. Some of the comments can be seen in the below image which shows police retrieving the teen’s body.

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Suicide is an absolute tragedy. What’s even sadder is the way that technology and the anonymity of the net have made people cold to the terrible hurt their actions are capable of causing. From the sad case of Megan Meier to this most recent story,  it is apparent that people are becoming increasingly disconnected from reality every time they sit down in front of the computer. As the Internet continues to take on an ever more important role in people’s lives, it is important that we learn to practice the same kind of civility and respect on the web as we do in our everyday lives.

Almost all college students are familiar with the website JuciyCampus.com. The site, which is live on hundreds of campuses across the United States, was created in 2007 to provide college students with an anonymous forum for discussing campus gossip and other “juicy” topics. Unsurprisingly, the site quickly became host to malicious attacks on students and scurrilous mischaracterizations of people’s character.

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Naturally, the students who were hurt by the site believed it to be nothing but a forum for baseless slander. In this regard, they have been very vocal in their criticism of JuicyCampus and have even spurred investigations from the Attorneys General of New Jersey and Connecticut. Despite this however, JuicyCampus has still been able to operate with relative immunity thanks to the Communications Decency Act of 1996 which says, basically, that any content posted on a website is not the responsibility of the site owner or webmaster.

Because of this,  many colleges have considered blocking access to the site completely. The optimal word in that sentence, however, is considered. Facing issues of First Amendment rights and the freedom of speech, no college has officially moved to ban the site.

That is, of course, until now. Thanks to the actions of Tennesee State University Vice President of Student Affairs Michael Freeman,  TSU has become the first public university in the country to ban JuicyCampus.

It will be interesting to see if any other colleges follow in TSU’s tracks. How will websites like JuicyCampus function in the future if they continue to get blocked, or if the laws change?

For more information on JuicyCampus, check out this article for ABC News featuring Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik.