If I were the gambling sort, I'd place bets that legislators will use this week's verdict in the MySpace hoax case, which resulted in the suicide of a teenage girl, to strengthen the laws against impersonating someone else (even an imaginary person) online.

As described on CNN, Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Missouri, was accused of fraudulently using MySpace to pose as a teenage boy who feigned romantic interest in 13-year-old Megan Meier -- initially, to find out what Meier might be saying about Drew's own daughter. When the "boy" withdrew his interest, Meier -- who, it turned out, was bipolar -- killed herself.

This week, Drew was convicted of three misdemeanor counts of fraudulently using MySpace servers to retrieve information about Meier -- one each for three separate dates. A felony conspiracy charge was thrown out after the jury failed to reach a verdict. She faces up to one year in prison for each count and fines of up to $100,000.

In other words, the fact that a 13-year-old girl ended up dead didn't factor into it. The only crime for which Drew was charged was that of violating MySpace's terms of service by creating a fake account to get information about Meier (who, under those same terms of service, should not have been able to get an account, being under 16).

But to what degree should Meier's death have been taken into consideration? If I tell someone to drop dead and they kill themselves from the trauma, to the best of my knowledge, I don't get charged with murder. Should it be different online? If Drew's messages to Meier had been done through the U.S. Mail, would she have been charged with mail fraud if no financial gain was made? (In my day, anonymous "slam books" got passed around making fun of people, but so far as I know nobody got arrested for it. On the other hand, nobody killed themselves either.)

In fact, some attorneys believe Drew shouldn't have been charged under that law at all. The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief in September, suggesting that using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (under which Drew was charged) to enforce a terms of service violation opened the door to all sorts of criminal charges being filed against people for the crime of not paying attention to screensful of legalese. Hypothetically, for example, Meier's parents could have been charged under the same law for allowing her to have a MySpace account even though she was underage.

In the classic response of "Don't just stand there, do something!" various legislators are proposing federal and state laws intended to outlaw cyberbullying -- 13 states have such laws already,some predating the Meier case -- and in some cases outlawing anonymous posting altogether, though it's been suggested that that could be a violation of free speech laws. In addition, a website (albeit somewhat hysterical) has also been set up to track such efforts and other news about cyberbullying.