By David Ponce
MySpace and parent company News Corp. are being sued by four families whose daughters 
were molested by adults they met of the site. They charge that MySpace did too little too late to implement security measures that could have helped prevent such an outcome, and are alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by the companies. They are seeking (you guessed it) monetary damages “in the millions of dollars
Now, we’re on the fence a little on this one. On the one hand, we agree that MySpace has some responsibility to create an environment that doesn’t make it so easy for sexual predators to play their games. A social networking site shouldn’t turn into a meat market for pedophiles and we agree that the corporation should at least try to create a safe environment.
On the other hand, whatever happened to responsible parenting? Whatever happened to watching over your own children, and teaching them about these sorts of things? Parents too busy? There was a time when parents told their kids not ever to get into a stranger’s car, even if he offered you some shiny lollipops. Why is it so hard to tell your kids never to trust an online stranger?
Opinions?
[ MySpace Lawsuit ]
I cannot agree more with you. If the parents wish to sue myspace then the local police should arrest the parents for reckless endangerment and providing an unsafe environment (perhaps even criminal facilitation to the delinquency of a minor). Parents get off your lazy noninternet savvy fat asses and get up to speed. Don’t blame a capitalist company for making money. Blame yourselves for breeding with ignorance. If you don’t like the net, disconnect it. But if you’re gonna shop and watch porn you’d best not be upset when your kids follow suit.
It’s really a shame that these kind of lawsuits can be filed and get on the news. Of course the parents are not making any sense at all, and worse, show by means of worldwide media what an idiots they really are. How can they be so shameless in filing this suit? Cause to me all they are doing is showing that they didnt educate their kids well in this area and on top of that showing them that if you fuck up, you can always sue a corporate giant of choice. What life-lessons are they teaching their kids? If i were them, i’d shut up, correct the mistake (if possible) and hope no-one will ever find out.
As of MySpace, i dont like it one bit, but from what i understand a lot of people do, so why take that fun away from so many people just cause you dont like it or refuse to educate your kids accordingly?
I agree with the rest of ya. It’s not myspace’s fault that there are sickos in the world that know how to use a computer to get at children. What would be the best situation here is 1) the parents to help their children through this tragedy rather than try to make money off their misfortune, 2) work with the authorities and myspace to find the scumbags that did this to their children and remove them from the gene pool, 3) establish better lines of communication between themselves and their children such that they know what’s going on in their lives.
If myspace wants to create a safer online experience for kids, that’s a beautiful thing for them to do. I don’t see how they should be “required” to provide anything more than what they’re prepared, able and willing to provide, though. As always, be aware of what you’re getting into, what your dependents are getting into and what can happen. It’s pretty simple.
I find that every regular computer user has little initiative to learn the basics in regard to computers, and parents are all too happy to use their ‘lack of time to learn’ as justification for picking some company’s pocket and calling it justice.
My opinion is that parents need to get off their asses and learn how to keep their children safe right now. What would these four families do if the molester hadn’t met their child online, but at the mall, or anywhere else. Would they sue the mall for not installing safe guards to make sure their babies are secure? No, they’d pound the man in the ground and he’d be in jail.
I’ve been working computers for 22 years now, and I’ve not seen it all yet, but I’ve seen too many lazy people complaining about some issue they call the fault of some site, when the responsibility is that of the user; not the lack of or failure to implement or whatever excuse they use to obtain free money.
You can’t honestly sue MySpace for implementing security measures ‘too late’ without documented proof they intentionally waited for something to break; that’s stupid and irresponsible.
I could go on for hours…
Agreed with the general consensus. Though I’ve avoided MySpace at all costs, I think it’s a little ridiculous that parents are suing the corporation for something their children were (indirectly) responsible for. Not to say that their daughters deserved it, clearly no one does, but this is a little extreme. I do hope other young users learn from this, though.
Well, this attitude fits with the current trend. I don?t think people taking responsibility for children will get any better as time goes on. Instead tools will be made, much like those already available, to track and catalog your offspring. Instead of spending time teaching parents will let the tools teach & track. Should the tools fail the blame will be placed firmly on the companies behind the tools. People are what they are, taking responsibility is hard and thus people do not wish to do it. Instead they will continue to find tricks to avoid it.
Idiots.
Yeah sorry my comment isn’t as long as everyone else’s, but I have nothing else to say. Except… idiots.
I agree that parents should educate there kids better, But I do think myspace could have saw that threat and made sure they covered there butts sooner. It is however, not myspaces job to make sure no one is being stupid with their site, and its ultimatly the parents fault.
Predators or parental neglect and juvenile deliquents? Myspace crawls with these teenage girls who lie about their age and develop websites displaying indecent, obscene photos of themselves. Is this because they are stupid and innocent? Not hardly – they are chasing after older guys. Once they hook them, phone numbres are exchanged, meetings set up, and off those little unsupervised brats go. Next we hear, they have grabbed another “sex predator” who is really some naive 18+ year old boy who next gets hit with “sexual assault” – the legal charge in statutory rape. The press plays the drama of catching another predator for ratings, the police and FBI tout how they are protecting us, the boys lives are ruined, everyone coddles the little brats as poor “victims”, and the parents sue Myspace.
Our legal system needs to start investigating these parents for child neglect and these poor little girls need to be put in the hands of juvenile authorities – that will put an end to most all of these dramas.
Predators or parental neglect and juvenile deliquents? Myspace crawls with these teenage girls who lie about their age and develop websites displaying indecent, obscene photos of themselves. Is this because they are stupid and innocent? Not hardly – they are chasing after older guys. Once they hook them, phone numbres are exchanged, meetings set up, and off those little unsupervised brats go. Next we hear, they have grabbed another “sex predator” who is really some naive 18+ year old boy who next gets hit with “sexual assault” – the legal charge in statutory rape. The press plays the drama of catching another predator for ratings, the police and FBI tout how they are protecting us, the boys lives are ruined, everyone coddles the little brats as poor “victims”, and the parents sue Myspace.
Our legal system needs to start investigating these parents for child neglect and these poor little girls need to be put in the hands of juvenile authorities – that will put an end to most all of these internet predator dramas.
Simply put alot of people are makeing money on myspace. Either by leaveing
links to their site. Adding comments with banners that link back to their site
and bands and Night clubs use it to promote themselves. Simply put, Myspace is a
Free Advertising machine and most people don’t even know the traffic they can get
By useing it. We use a program called myfriendbuilder and it simply automates all
our links and stuff. They even have a free version at the site
http://www.myfriendbuilder.com/