A federal judge's dismissal of a cyberbullying conviction that relied on finding a defendant guilty of violating MySpace's terms of service garnered praise from legal experts on Friday.

The ruling dismissed the remaining charges against Missouri resident Lori Drew, whom federal prosecutors had charged with hacking for bullying a girl on MySpace. The bullying allegedly contributed to the death of the girl, who hung herself in her closet. In November, a jury found Drew guilty on misdemeanor hacking charges and innocent of more serious felony violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

In dismissing the remaining misdemeanor convictions, Federal District Judge George H. Wu argued that, once the jury cleared Drew of the charges of unauthorized access to a protected computer, the case was no longer about cyberbullying, but whether violating a Web site's terms of service was a crime.

"The reasoning of the opinion is that whatever unauthorized access means, it cannot mean mere violation of terms of service without more," Orin Kerr, a professor of law at George Washington University, said in a statement on the ruling. "Such a reading of the statute would render the statute unconstitutionally void for vagueness because it would give the government almost unlimited power to prosecute any Internet user and wouldn't give citizens sufficient notice as to what of their Internet conduct was criminal."

Kerr and other legal experts had previously criticized the government's case, saying that the pressure to prosecute Drew had led to charges that put regular citizens in danger of being prosecuted.

Drew had been charged with taking part in a "conspiracy" to cause harm to 13-year-old Megan Meier, by creating a MySpace profile for a fictitious 16-year-old boy in violation of the site's terms of service. The judge ruled that just violating the terms of service is not enough to be charged criminally.

"All manner of situations will be covered ... all can be prosecuted," Judge Wu wrote in the ruling. "Given the 'standardless sweep' that results, federal law enforcement entities would be improperly free 'to pursue their personal predilections.'"

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