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Teen Sues MySpace Over Sexual Assault
kaufmanmoore writes "A 14-year old is suing myspace for $30 million claiming the site failed to protect her from a 19-year old she met through the site. The suit claims that MySpace doesn't verify a user's identity or age and doesn't do enough to protect users."
Where money goes, lawsuits follow.
And right now, Myspace has a lotta money.
From the article:
MySpace says on a "Tips for Parents" page that users must be 14 or older. The Web site does nothing to verify the age of the user, such as requiring a driver's license or credit card number, Loewy said.
What kind of 14 year old kid has a credit card or a license?
I didn't know Myspace was a pre-requisite for the exchange of emails and phone calls, nor that the going rate for "facilitating" rape was thirty fucking million dollars.
Argh.
As much as I detest Myspace and would absolutely love to see them go down.... this is just another frivilous lawsuit with someone trying to play the scapegoat game. Encountering a sexual predator on Myspace is no different than any other million sites where this could have happened but if it weren't for the deep pockets myspace has generated there would be no lawsuit. The users of sites like these (and hell, users of anything in general!!!) are still responsible for THEIR OWN actions and while I'm sorry that she was victimized, this young girl (or rather, her lawyers / parents) is now trying to create another victim. Give me a break, accept responsibility for your own actions. This isn't because "Myspace didn't protect me"
Doesn't she already get justice by having the 19-year-old jailed?
You are not entitled to money for being stupid and immature. You should not be meeting STRANGERS over the internet, where nothing is ever as it seems, and most people lie about their most basic personal traits.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
The lawsuit is just plain stupid. I simply don't understand HOW someone can 'verify' their age over the computer. Short of requiring everyone to scan some sort of documentation of their age and requiring MySpace to hire a staff of thousands more people to daily comb through each user one by one as they register (simply not practical), there is no possible way MySpace (or ANY site on the internet that doesn't require a credit card for that matter) can verify it. They're basicly sueing MySpace for not doing the impossible.
Or even a "parental responsibility" clause. Why did her parents allow her to meet a total stranger without supervision? And why does Myspace have any more responsibility than ANY other community-based website or bulletin board?
Argh.
I'm sorry, but MySpace are being expected to pay $30 Million to them for being idiots? I'll go hit myself on the head with a hammer and sue Black and Decker for supplying me with a weapon that gave me brain damage.
:o
Even if Myspace *was* a pre-requisite for email, the rape didn't occur on-line. She met someone on-line and then decided to follow-up with a personal get-together. Where was her mother when she was getting ready for her "date"? What kind of mother teaches a 14-year-old girl that it's OK to meet strange guys? Finally, what's to say that age-verification would have prevented the rape? Do they really think that she would have been totally safe if she was meeting a completely anonymous boy her own age?
Age verification is fine for sites that require you to be 18 or over, but if you want 14-year-olds to use your site, I can't think of a good way to verify their age that doesn't have really disturbing implications.
If they talked to each other on the phone several times before meeting in person, why is AT&T not liable for failing to protect her?
Let me see if I understand this correctly: a 19-year-old claimed to be only 18 on his myspace profile, and this is worth $30 million?
I'm not excusing the guy's actions. He knew she was 14, and that's not OK, even if she said yes, which I'm guessing she probably did. And lying about your age is generally not cool. But I really don't think MySpace could have reasonably done anything that would have stopped this from happening. Do you think she wouldn't have agreed to meet him, if she had known he was really 19?
They started by sending e-mail, then exchanging phone numbers and talking on the phone; at what point do you draw the line and say what these people do is not MySpace's responsibility? If I find a (18+) girl on MySpace, send her e-mail, she e-mails me back, I send her my phone number, she calls me, we talk, we go out for coffee, things go well, we start dating, have dinner a few times, then one day we get into an argument and she punches me in the face - can I sue MySpace for failing to protect me from her?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
$30 million is two decades worth of average adult earnings to you?
See, this is why the US has problems with offshoring. I'll do the same job for only $20 million! And we're off on the slippery slope to an average adult only earning $10 million or so in two decades... disgraceful.
Read Pynchon.
If teens must use myspace, teenspace, yourspace, funkyspace, pinkspace, lacyspace, or whatever, make the retention of their conversations a requirement. The prohibition of sex with minors, of voting for minors, of access to alcohol and porn to minors, are well founded. Minors are not known for adult reasoning skills. Adult parents are still in their lives for a very good reason: Adults (should be) more knowledgeable and responsible, and should be educating their kids. They should also be monitoring their kids. Give the parent the tools to monitor the chat and messaging behaviour of their kids. Fuck their privacy, or realize it's your fault as parent when they get fucked.
For that matter, they could have hooked up over the phone or whatever other means you can think of (so all of a sudden ATT or whomever would have to verify age/identity of caller???). I don't really think Myspace has anything to do with this.
Cedric
Not this one again - I know this case is a standard-bearer for the insane lawsuits that come to pass in America but this one was actually not without merit - the coffee was served way too hot (180-odd degrees, which is unfit for consumption - it would burn the mouth) and McDonalds knew it was a problem - there were a *lot* of previous cases and the woman got third degree burns over some *very* sensitive areas.
Oh and the court case found her 1/5 responsible for what happened so was granted "only" 4/5 of the granted compensatory damages.
See now the one where a guy that broke into a house, managed to lock himself in the garage and had to spend two weeks subsisting on dog food and a couple of cans of fizzy drinks because the owners were on holiday and then sued that family for a lot of money - thats a better example :)
This is not about the internet. No internet knowledge is required to avoid a situation like this. The girl didn't get assaulted over the internet, she went on a date with the guy IN REAL LIFE. Only knowledge needed is real life knowledge like "don't go out with a stranger", "don't trust a stranger" and "make sure there's always someone else around who can help you, unless you're strong enough to handle the situation yourself. The last one isn't even children-specific, everyone should know that.
Remember the old times? When the law was supposed to protect the innocent? When the law's job was to make sure, as long as you act rational and normal, you can consider yourself safe from nutjobs?
That turned 180 degrees. Today, being stupid can be very profitable. Thus we get all those neat little "safety stickers" (you know, the "things look smaller in mirror" crap things) on EVERYTHING. In a perfect world, those stickers wouldn't exist and Darwin would be given a chance to prove his theory that whoever is too stupid to live will be eliminated from the gene pool. The stupid would die out and evolution would take over.
Suddenly Creationism (and its advocates) starts to make sense. Not as a theory, but just WHY they advocate it. I mean, would you like a theory that told you that you should've been eliminated centuries ago... anyway.
Our legal system is protecting those who're too stupid to live. Not every time, mind you, there are still very justified suits, but there's a lot of suits that reek like this one. I'm stupid, and it's someone else's fault that my being stupid and careless, and that I didn't think put me in an undesireable position.
It's convenient to blame someone else for our mistakes. And profitable! But as a bottom line, there are 3 people to blame:
The 19 year old, for he should DEFINITLY have known better.
The parents of the 14 year old, for they should have cared what their daughter is doing online.
The 14 year old, for not thinking what a 19 year old could have in mind.
Where I do blame most of the 14 year olds fault at her parents again. Why didn't they prepare her? They should have told her what a 19 year old wants from her, they should have told her that it's not a good idea to meet a random stranger online.
But that would have required to talk with her about (*eek*) sex! It's more convenient and less embarrassing to sue now.
And of course start a riot about how online media need to be doing the parent's job! I.e., watching what their kids do online.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As a high school teacher and father of 4 children, I can assure you all that by 14 they have already started making their own decisions. How we protect them from their own ignorance is something that anyone who works with teens wonders every day. Unfortunately they possess a childs brain inside and (almost) adult body .......
Yes... you can. Seriously, I really don't buy this. It's part of a growing idea (certainly in Britain) that it's impossible to parent properly and monitor what children get up to, and it's an absolute myth. Up until the age of about 11 or 12 children should have no guaranteed privacy in terms of what they say and do, and if they've been used to loving oversight for all of their lives they won't have a problem with this. Sure, they can have conversations with their friends, but parents should be aware of what's going on and step in if something isn't right.
They should be gradually introduced to having independent passtimes and activities - like a Scout group or sports team - but understand that they are supervised by the adult that's in charge there. Only when they're entering their teens should they start to do any activities really on their own, and to begin with they should be clearly definined things like meeting some friends for a milkshake and then picked up again in the car. By the time they hit mid-teens they should be responsible enough to go and do things without running everything past mom and dad, but always know that they can come and talk about any problems.
The idea that a 14 year-old girl can meet a 19 year-old man without parents being aware until afterwards should raise questions about the parents' responsibility (neglect is a form of child abuse, although I don't know enough details to allege that in this case).
Where does the Internet fit into this? Web usage should follow the same pattern: a 14 year-old saying "I'm using the Internet" is even less specific than saying "I'm going to the mall" - in both cases the answer should be "no you're not". If they say "I'm just messaging Jane" then 20 minutes later they should be asked "are you still messaging Jane - why not invite her over for dinner if you're talking for so long?" If they're researching something for school then that's what they should stick to. Social time on the 'net should be limited and checked. If they abuse trust and lie about what they're doing then it should be withdrawn for a period of time.
This may sound terribly draconian but I think it's the only way to bring up children safely and with an understanding of what's right and safe and what's wrong and dangerous. I spent hours on the computer alone as a child, but we didn't have a modem and my parents knew what software was there. I also spent hours in the street playing with friends, but my parents knew every other parent on the street and it was a quiet cul-de-sac. Things have changed now, and it's not safe to let children play outside alone, and neither is it safe for them to play on the Internet alone. If parents aren't available to supervise then the children can't play in the street; if they can't supervise the 'net then it should be unplugged or password protected until they can.
Why is a 14 year old allowed unsupervised access to the internet. I maybe getting old...
The internet is the greatest market place in the world. People go here for trade, conversation, news/gissip and inspiration. There are public spaces where you can make a fool of yourself and there are dark back alleys where other people can make a fool of you. This is a place where everyone is treated like a adult with no regard for your age.
How many parents would let their 14yr old children roam a big unknown city at night by themselves? How do children learn to recognize the good from the bad it their parents don't guide them?
When someone has a private party (myspace) and is inviting children to join in... what may be expected? What is posible to expect?
In this case, myspace had no way of knowing that this man could be treat to this girl. You can not assume that every 18+ male is a pervert. This relationship (if that's the word) developed mostly outside the control and supervision of myspace. I think that there is really nothing myspace could have done differently; except maybe, not to invite children to begin with.
What I cannot create, I do not understand
And why does Myspace have any more responsibility than ANY other community-based website or bulletin board?
Because they have more money to sue for.
May the Maths Be with you!
If I (hypothetically) were a minor and committed a major act of vandalism or property crime, my parents would be held liable for the damages because, as a minor, they are responsible for my actions. If, as a minor, I manage to get a credit card by forging my parent's permission and run up a large number of purchases & fail to pay them, my parents would be held liable. If I commit fraud, agree to a EULA that asserts that I am of a given age, why are they no longer responsible for my actions?
This is exactly the kind of story that should be covered in an afterschool special. If the family wants money, sell the story, to hell with the courts.
Personally, I think the family should be told to stuff it and she should be made an example of by the media as the stupid little slut she is. These stupid little girls need to be told, harshly, that trying to manipulate scuzzy guys with sex can very well get them hurt (or even killed). Instead, whenever it happens, the girls are never at fault and are always "good girls" who were unfairly victimized and could never do anything wrong - regardless of how trashy & loose they were.
A great example is this highschool girl from my hometown - she was dating a 30ish drug dealer several cities away for some time. As girls her age are prone to do, she grew tired of him and decided to break up with him. As they are also prone to do, they are petty & vindictive towards ex-boyfriends, and threatened to turn him in. As bigtime drugdealers are prone to do, he kidnapped her, beat her & eventually executed her, burying her body in a shallow grave in the mountains. Media response? Obviously she was pure, innocent & unfairly victimized by a complete monster. Not that she could -ever- have any idea that bad things could happen to her for sleeping with a man twice her age in exchange for meth...
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
It is with a great deal of sadness that we announce the death of personal responsibility.
Personal responsibility is survived by common sense.
Responsibility
begining of time -- 2006
R.I.P
If it's too difficult, I can't understand it !
$0.01 would be grossly outlandish, too.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Up until the age of about 11 or 12 children should have no guaranteed privacy in terms of what they say and do, and if they've been used to loving oversight for all of their lives they won't have a problem with this.
Man it's Nazis like you that take a childs trust and piss all over it - I don't care if you are dressing it up in nicey nicey language and giving a couple of half-assed exceptions to your draconian behavior. I give my child the privacy he wants, he respects me and listens to what I say and then he does it too.
I warn him of the consequence, which is all I can do, and if he fucks up then its his fault. He knows he can talk to me if he does, he can talk to me about anything. I'm not going to start taking that freedom away and locking up his television/computer/bike when I dont think its right for him.
Thats called LEARNING. You cannot cotton ball children, or chain them up and make them do what you want. They will just end up resenting you and then before you know it (because they won't tell you) they will be hooked up with some druggy taking herion.
The next thing you'll know, mr/miss, is they're face'll be on the news found dead somewhere.
Good luck, you're going to need it.
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
The children are protected online. Their problem is protection offline beyond the realms of a website. MySpace is not revealing personal data at another member's request through their website. The children are protected online to the best of MySpace's abilities. This girl wasn't abused on the web in a session of cybersex where MySpace provided a button to electrochute her.
How concerned her parents is on protecting her offline is a better question.
Obviously, they can do the basics as verifying personal data, and we have a similar site in Sweden that does exactly that, but abuse still happens, because believe it or not, there still exist plenty of jerks who don't mind providing their real information. Most probably get away with it too, by threatening the girl to not speak. In the end, your own mind is your most powerful weapon against "online predators".
The major flaw in their argument is that she was fully protected online, as MySpace does not allow members to get actual address and user information at request. Their problem is that she was not protected offline, and who's to deal with that if not her friends and/or parents. Have your first date at your parents home and have a talk in your room to get to know each other better for christ sake, not his apartment or something. Get some friends and go to the movies and have a good time while you get to know him. It doesn't have to be all "OMG, let's go to your apartment on our first date and have sex". Especially if you're just 14.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Sounds like a publicity stunt and frivolous style lawsuit to me. That's not to say that the alleged assult didn't happen. But last time I checked, it was up to parents to protect their kids from associating with strangers and potential predators...NOT websites.
The 14 year old willingly went out with this person...to dinner, then a movie. Why aren't the restaurant, movie theater and apartment complex (where the girl was allegedly assaulted) being sued as well? They weren't protecting this girl either. They aren't being held responsible, so what does MySpace have to do with the incident itself?
If an underaged girl meets some guy in public on the street and he manipulates her in whatever way, a lawsuit wouldn't be filed against the city...the responsible parties are the suspect, the girl, and her legal guardians. MySpace doesn't even begin to fit into any of these catgories.
If the Internet was fully regulated by the government and was subject to specific laws in which websites had a heavy responsiblity to police their users, then maybe this girl would have a valid argument/case. Otherwise, this is just another episode of "How Ignorant People Make Money Off of the Internet"
The problem is that one cannot learn to make good decisions as long as one is protected from the outcomes. Decision making needs practice. If we want children to become responsible adults while skipping the irresposible years of adolescence, what we actually get is irresponsible adults. The law-makers would probably answer by raising the legal age of maturity by a few years, but that would just lead into the endless cycle of people maturing at increasingly higher age.
In May, after a series of e-mails and phone calls, he picked her up at school, took her out to eat and to a movie, then drove her to an apartment complex parking lot in South Austin, where he sexually assaulted her, police said. He was arrested May 19.
Sexual assualt is not ok but mark this one up as being younge and stupid. If a 19 year old takes you to dinner and a movie and you agree to go back to his place certain things are expected of you. This does not mean that what the boy did was acceptable but anyone slightly mature would realize what they are giving the impression they are going to do by going to his house. The girl involved is partially responsible only becuase she is younge. When i saw this i mean it like someone is responsible for their own mugging if they walk through a bad neighborhood at night. This lawsuit is rediculous becuase MySpace is where they met, not where the crime happened.
This is like suing the a mall where two teenagers meet before one purpetrates sexual assault on the other. This is rediculous and the only reason the suit is happening can be summed up from this line:
"Founded in 2003, MySpace has more than 80 million registered users worldwide and is the world's third most-viewed Web site, according to the lawsuit."
Basically MySpace seems like a good target becuase of its success. Another funny thing here is the $30m figure. You cant even sue someone for that much in worse crimes than sexual assault where the girl is partially at fault.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I agree with you in principle: these girls are not the innocents they are made out to be (in fact, children in general are a lot less innocent than the media would have us believe - try shifting some tresspassing nine year olds and they will all shout "you can't do anything to me, I'll say you hit me"). However, I think that the punishment of death for being petty and vindictive is a little extreme. She should have known better, yes, but that doesn't mean she deserves death.
Carpe Daemon
Up until the age of about 11 or 12 children should have no guaranteed privacy in terms of what they say and do...
I suppose you read the part of my post that mentioned the 12-16 range, right? Starting around 12 yo, you can't just check everything they do.
This may sound terribly draconian but I think it's the only way to bring up children safely and with an understanding of what's right and safe and what's wrong and dangerous.
You don't have kids, do you?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I don't care how old she is; Greed is still Greed!
Lets not Mince words here, she's a money grubbing little SLUT and so are her parents. Had they taught her anything about life they'd have told her that boys and men will want to get into her pants, period. It's not nice, but it is reality. If they had talked to her about this when she began puberty maybe none of this would have happened. If indeed she was sat down and had the birds and bees conversation; they would have told her she should have known better and it was her bed to lay in now, pun not entirely intended.
Parents these days don't take proper responsibility or teach their children anything when it comes to morals or self worth, or even taking the responsibility for your own actions. I cannot believe that there is any motive other than publicity and Money.
I've said my Piece\Peace
Richard H. Smith Jr.
rhsjr7
His point isn't that she deserved it. It's that by painting her as a pure innocent and glossing over the fact that she was engaging in some obviously stupid and dangerous behavior does a disservice to the rest of the community. Incident like that should scream to the rest of the kids in the community that hanging out with that kinda of person and that kind of lifestyle can get you hurt or killed. Instead the news/family paints it as a nearly random kidnapping more often than not.
jello.
aka aron.
If a 19 year old takes you to dinner and a movie and you agree to go back to his place certain things are expected of you
Whooooah there. Wait just one damn minute. You surely can't mean what I think you mean, do you? Please tell me I've misunderstood what you've said.
If you go around to someones place, they may or may not be hoping for something of a sexual nature to happen, but there is never, ever an expectation on someone to "put out" just because you went to visit. Yes, it is a fair assumption that someone who has just wined and dined you is going to try to put the moves on you, but merely visiting isn't consent to take things as far as they want. The visitor can soak up the dinner and movie, drop over, drink their coffee and eat their chips, and at the end of the evening get on up and go, and there's not a damn thing expected of them.
Having said that, I'd question the wisdom of heading back to a 19-year olds place after dinner and a movie because there's a good chance they've got something quite specific in mind. But bear in mind this is a 14-year old, and they don't always have the life experience to avoid making such a poor decision.
My reply to you would be far, far more vicious if I thought you genuinely meant what you've written. It just seems so far out that I'm hoping you chose your words poorly; please tell me that I've misread your actual intent.
and when in the earth some 19 yo male will get a girl from school, treat her with a meal and go out for movies with her, and DO NOTHING? this girl is plain stupid.
there are two things in the world that is infinite
(1) the universe
(2) human stupidity
suing myspace for this kind of sexual assault is similar to suing DARPA for it
fuck the girl!
The thing is, we're all ultimately responsible for our own actions, as we're the ones who have to live with the consequences. Since she's young, her parents should have helped her.
And she didn't experience the worst thing evar, that would probably be being killed/maimed. Sure, it is shameful, dangerous and unpleasant. But this extreme attitude that the victim should feel extreme shame their entire lives needs to go.
The guy is in jail, and why is myspace being sued again?
Isn't this child negligence? The mother is the one at fault here letting her daughter do anything she wants, traveling off with people who she's never met? Of course the mother will say, I didn't know what she was doing. And I'd like to be able to sue that stupid bitch. Because knowing what your children are doing is what being a parent is all about, and she failed miserably.
Yeah, but MySpace is no less safe than meeting in a chat room or on AIM - it's just that MySpace gives the users the opportunity to fill out an age field. On AIM, he would have had to lie himself. I don't see why that distiction would cause MySpace to have more responsibility than a normal chat room.
How about talking to someone in person? Does that allow you to hide your age? She says MySpace should have protected her by age verification, etc. SHE MET THE GUY FACE TO FACE. She then wen't out with him, had dinner, etc. So, she is suing MySpace for not verifying age, yet she couldn't verify his age herself, MEETING FACE TO FACE. How is this the fault of MySpace again?
If they meet on MySpace, that's one thing, but if they want to go and meet in person, no website in the world is responsible for that.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
At the age of 14 it is really hard for most kids to really understand the consequences of a sexual relationship. Now, maybe some few kids can actually comprehend this and thus provide a meaningful consent, but it's very few and there's no good test we can give them to screen the mature from the immature. So, a "magical age" was created where it was decided that most people would in fact be able to understand complex relationships. Yes, some people over this age don't really comprehend the issue, but the line had to be drawn somewhere.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
- If McDonalds coffee was really dangerous, they'd have been sued in every country around the World. Were they? Didn't think so.
- And if "Third degree burns occur at this temperature in just two to seven seconds" how ever did other customers drink this coffee without burning their mouths and throats and requiring skin grafts?
Damn. You're a troll aren't you? D'Oh!Reduce, reuse, cycle
But how did he learn that trust and respect in the first place? It doesn't happen by magic. Sure, children need to learn from mistakes, but those mistakes need to happen in a safe environment to start with so that the consequences are limited. When children are learning to walk we don't let them wander all over town and across busy streets - they're encouraged to try walking from one person to another in the home, and then outside holding an adults hand. Their freedom to walk without direct involvement of an adult is gradually increased, and if a worrying trend develops their their freedom is reined back a little, for instance if they keep wandering into the road then they might be made to hold hands for the rest of that trip and that pattern repeated until they've learnt the lesson.
Social interactions are no different, children gradually build up an understanding of how the world works and how to recognise danger in social situations. They aren't born with an innate ability to understand the world that would flourish if only parents didn't hold them back (as you seem to suggest). I can see your point: over-protectiveness can be just as damaging as neglect, but it's about being appropriate to the child's level of development. The majority of (but clearly not absolutely all) 14 year-olds are not ready to move about in the adult world completely unsupervised, be it virtually via the Internet or physically, as this story clearly illustrates.
Yes - but a responsible parent will ensure that the "fuck up" will not do serious damage to the mental or physical health of the child. In the case of this story the 'hands off' approach has been shown not to work - the mental and possibly physical heath of a minor has been seriously damaged through sexual assult that should not have been possible if appropriate supervision had been in place.
Thats like the easiest thing to say here. Seems like people are lying all around. I cant really say that I am surprised, its been sometime since I have read about some perv online taking advantage of someone, but this case is all fubar. Honestly, WOW! Where was the mother? Right now, I am with child, my second, so come Oct. I will have one 4 year old son, and one newborn little girl. Where was this girls mother, or father for that matter? In this household, the parents are both geeks, maybe that will help to make sure our children will not have something like this happen to them. We will monitor their every move online *muhaha* Seriously though, Myspace isnt at fault, thats just like saying O Snap! I logged onto YIM and some perv messaged me, and now hes stalking me b/c I was stupid enough to give him my phone/address/etc. I have yet to see the word NAIVE come into play. Doesn't anyone here remember being 14, you might have been mature, but not about everything. I guess I will be the first to admit such a fault. When I was 14, I had a curfew, what about this girl....maybe she met him during daylight hours, but seriously, you cant be that NAIVE to not tell when someone is *tons* older than you. Im really upset when I see shit like this go down, where are the parents, Im not that old as it is, so I cant say my time was 'back in the day', but DAMN, back in my day, parents were abit more responsible for their children. We had curfews, and we had that thing that says 'You tell me where you are going AT ALL TIMES', maybe this girls mother was a crackhead, that might explain abit, but 30mil isnt worth your own stupidity for doing something that dumb, your parents neglect since they *seem* to know nothing about whats going on in your life until something like this happens, and it sure isnt worth the news its getting. It bothers me even more than yet again, Americans are labeled as sue-aholics, this is the kinda shit that gets that fire going. I really seem to think this mother assumed the computer was a babysitter for her teen, and look how it turned out. Can you sue people for being stupid? I think we have an award for this mother...
Don't you all think the mother is the one who made a problem out of it?
Here's a possibility:
I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't the first time the girl got layed. It's just that her mother found out this time and a teenage girl then does what works best: Play the victim role and accuse the neighbor/teacher/boyfriend/one night stand whatever really happened. I always have my doubts in cases like this. There ARE 14 year old sluts. There's no denying it. They get their tramp stamp tattooed when they're 12 and as soon as they have it they start showing it off in malls wearing hardly anything. And when the parents find out.... they can't handle their own failure and start victimizing their poor special girls.
I'm not saying pedophiles and assholes don't exist. They do and the law is the law. But who's fault it is when a kid ends up on someones dick remains to be seen. My guess is it's mostly the parents, the kid herself and the local school culture that are to blame. And of course the owner of the dick for not checking her ID.
And indeed sueing MySpace is like seuing the police for letting everything else happen on the public street "cause they didn't do enough to prevent it". Ridiculous.
I think its fair that Myspace sue her and her family back for 300 million dollars for...
Straight from the MYspace Terms of Service...
"Please choose carefully the information you post on MySpace.com and that you provide to other Users."
Choose being the key word here. She chose to contact people with her personal information, thus putting herself at risk...
"Your MySpace.com profile may not include the following items: telephone numbers, street addresses, last names"
If her profile can not contain any personal contact info as per the rules, she then chose (theres that word again) to contact this 19 year old.
Myspace is not at fault for anything.
If anything, this 14 year old is a whore.
Case and point.
I read the artice.. here's what I see....
"I hooked up on MySpace and it went bad, bad enough my parents found out. The guys in jail but I'm still they're blaming me for putting up a MySpace page looking for hookups,who can I blame? Oh yeah. MySpace did it by not stopping the guy I e-mailed. We should also sue MicroSoft for not predator filtering e-mail in outlook"
Or...
"Our daughter is no slut. There's no way that unless someone or something else facilitated it she would never get in a situation like that. Where is she now? She was really upset so she's spending the night at her friends.. um.. Marsha or somethings like that's house. We can't get a quote for you right now from her because she said Marsha's phone was out..."
Maybe I'm wrong, I'll admit that. But if I were betting money I know where it would be. Yes, the guy is a creep and criminal for doing this, but the parents should have been aware of the childs surfing habits. There is no excuse now a days and enough software that you could both track and control a browser. At the very least they should have known about her MySpace site, and her e-mail.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I hate to be mean, but this just looks like another case of lawyers and distraught/greeding parents trying to cash in on a tragic situation. As irresponsible as people can be, I really do not believe that any reasonable person believes MySpace holds any responsibility for what happened. Ultimately, people are responsible for their own actions and deep inside everybody knows this to be true. Lawsuits like these are more about revenge and greed than they are about going after the people responsible for some wrong-doing.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
if there's an area of town i'm not comfortable being around - i just don't go there. you don't like getting sexual emails from users on myspace? delete your account. why doesn't she take legal action against the 19 year old? isn't he the one causing the problems, not myspace? oh wait - he's not worth millions of dollars.
"MySpace says on a "Tips for Parents" page that users must be 14 or older. The Web site does nothing to verify the age of the user, such as requiring a driver's license or credit card number, Loewy said.
To create an account, a MySpace user must list a name, an e-mail address, sex, country and date of birth.
"None of this has to be true," the lawsuit said.
Uh, what 14 year old has a DL or credit card? This would accomplish nothing. The adult predator who does have a CC and/or DL could simply input their info and still sign up as a minor, saying that they're verifying that they give permission for their child to have an account. This still wouldn't solve shiat.
The kid's parents are shirking responsibility for their inaction to supervise her and the stupidity of their daughter.
Granted she didn't deserve this, but c'mon. MySpace isn't responsible for making sure it's users aren't acting like dumbasses.
Also from the article:
"If you interact on MySpace, you are safe, but if a 13-year-old or 14-year-old goes out in person and meets someone she doesn't know, that is always an unsafe endeavor," Gelman said. "We need to teach our kids to be wary of strangers."
If your child doesn't know by kindergarten that strangers aren't to be trusted, you're asking for trouble. If your teen doesn't know by now, then thats one example of failure to adequately parent.
"We feel that 1 percent of that is the bare minimum that they should compensate the girl for their failure to protect her online when they knew sexual predators were on that site," he said.
They're going to have to PROVE that MySpace knew that there were predators on their site and failed to police its own system. Even if MySpace was used like this in the past, that doesn't go towards proving it. They're going to have a hard time with this point.
I live in Travis County, and can't wait to see how this unfolds. I hope it gets thrown out of court as its an obvious attempt to get a hand-out.
If they really want justice, sue the 19 yr old that molested her. Of course, they won't since he doesn't have $30M to pay them.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
"When i saw this i mean it like someone is responsible for their own mugging if they walk through a bad neighborhood at night."
Dude, noone is _responsible_ for their own mugging or their own rape, especially when the _only_ "fault" is being at that place at that time. It's not like someone went to the biggest gangster in the neighbourhood and started calling them names or anything even remotely resembling starting it. So blaming the victim or making them _responsible_ of their mis-fortune, when again all they've done was happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, strikes me as _absurd_ to the extreme.
You may call it poor foresight, maybe even bad judgment, but outright shifting the blame onto the victim is just surrealistic.
Also, as a guy, I feel insulted by being compared to a mugger in a bad neighbourhood. The implication that going to a guy's house is obviously (enough to deserve blaming the victim) gonna result in getting raped if you don't put out, is outright insulting to males as a whole.
And generally, I don't know in what geek fantasy world do you live, where that kind of an attitude towards women is normal, but rest assured that most males can understand such notions as "free will." Nothing "is expected of" anyone just because you gave them a meal and a cinema ticket. If you want to get laid, there's that "free will" again: you have to make them want to do that and/or get past their inhibitions. You're trying to win someone's _consent_, not buying a quick fuck at a brothel. Wining and dining them is a means of making yourself likeable enough to that end, not buying a non-refundable ticket for sex.
I can tell you that I've had classmates and such coming to my home, or me going over to theirs, and the notion didn't even enter my head that I have some obvious right to fuck them one way or another. Sure, I'd try to make some move, rarely it actually worked, most of the time it _didn't_ work (guess my being fairly nerdy didn't help either), but at no point was there an idea that they have some duty to put out, much less that failure to do so is punishable by rape.
So excuse me if I take it as an insult when I read no less than that coming to my place was comparable to going to get mugged at night in a bad neighbourhood.
And let's not even get into the whole aspect of doing it with a underage kid, in any form or shape.
"This lawsuit is rediculous becuase MySpace is where they met, not where the crime happened."
With that I can aggree, though. But again, that doesn't make the girl guilty of her own rape either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I seem to remember reading somewhere, or maybe it was a lecture from a law professor who said everyone is responsible for their own actions.
This idiot of a kid probably placed herself as an adult (listing her age as 18). Went and met some guy who she thought would be "sooo cool" to meet because he is older. Then got in way over her head.
That, or in related news 14 year old gets married to 19 year old who previously assaulted her.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Not quite. A 14 year old can enter into contracts - the catch is that they are voidable at the minor's discretion, thereby putting all the risk on the other party.
FTFA: The lawyer for the parents:
FTFA: The lawyer for the parents:
FTFA:
FTFA: Stanford Law School:
And the same can be said for the local mall, the local cineplex, the local church, the local school, the local park, and any one of a number of other venues. Pete Solis has been arrested and charged. MySpace hasn't been charged, because they commited no crime, and didn't go out of their way to enable a crime. The only other difference (and a very significant one) is Solis, the alleged rapist, doesn't have $30 million.
Bottom line: There is no real way to verify a person's age or identity online that doesn't also cause problems. The internet is like any other public place - anyone can use it, and anyone *will* use it - which is why parents need to be more vigilant. Even that won't be enough, though - if the Internet were to disappear tomorrow, rapes and assaults would still happen, no matter how careful everyone is ... which is why you go after the per[p|v]s.
You must not be a lawyer. Or a parent looking to divert attention away from yourself.
It wasn't too long ago that it could have been LiveJournal instead of MySpace in this headline. Should be interesting to see who winds up in the crosshairs once MySpace wears thin. Time for a loser-pays rule for suing, IMO.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
First thing the girl would think of after this is to go make some money? If she wanted to litigate against someone responsible she'd go after the 19 year old. Sueing Myspace is the more profitable option. If she was actually aggrieved here she would prefer to get the 19yr old.
The money-grubbing nature of the suit makes it likely that the parents found out about this later and are exploiting the opportunity to milk money off Myspace success. The girl herself wouldn't even be thinking about Myspace unless she didn't even care about the 19yr-old's participation in the first place.
The girl may even have participated willingly in the act(which doesn't make it legal), but then the parents found out later and wanted money.
The point is that you are responsible for your safety. As a parent you are also responsible for your kids safety.
If you leave your kids with a known pedophile you are guilty of willful endangerment irrespective whether anything happens. MySpace (as much as I think it's a worthless POS and should die) is not responsible for this. WTF was a 14 year old doing looking to meet a guy for anyway? And a Double WTF to the parents for not at least having the meeting supervised.
As a parent of two kids I will acknowledge that you can not watch your kids 100% of the time, but instilling basic self preservation and understanding of being in situations you can not control is something that should happen before a child is allowed to run free.
-nB
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It doesn't matter if it is the first time the girl got laid.
It doesn't matter if it was consensual. (It probably wasn't forced sex, or he'd be charged with rape, not sexual assault)
It doesn't matter if this would never have come to light had the mother not found out.
He's 19. She's 14. As you said the law is the law, and sexual assault is sexual assault.
He should be prosecuted - it is his fault he fooled around with a minor, and all accounts indicate that she said she was 14 on myspace.
Oh, and btw, suing myspace is ridiculous.
I agree....what the hell happened to personal responsibility? And in this case...since she is a minor, it applies to her parents!!
Actually...I'd say the avg. 14 yr old today is more savvy than my generation and should know much better than this....as a young girl, you can't be that trusting of someone you just meet. Also, her parents should be keeping up with who her friends are and who she is meeting..especially from some online forum!
It isn't the websites fault nor responsibility to police behavior...they are just providing a communitcations forum.
People could be meeting by telephone, but, you wouldn't think of suing the phone company for not doing their part to screen people would you?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Granted, it's terrible what happened to the girl, but how is Myspace to blame here? If someone goes to a bar, meets someone, goes back to their place, and gets assaulted, should the victim sue the bar? After all, that's where the victim met the attacker. Is this girl's family going to sue the movie theater and restaurant where they ate and watched a movie? Those businesses didn't do anything to protect her rights either... Myspace does provide *some* protection for minors, if the user is true about their age, but it is not Myspace's responsibility to screen each and every user to verify their true age. There shouldn't even be a lawsuit. Go after the attacker instead.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
My little girl is only three at the moment (I'm 30). If I could hit the pause button I would. I know my big battle will be to not be overly protective while still being protective enough.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Girl sues Stop-n-Shop because the store failed to protect her from the 19-year old she met in the produce section. He invited her to join him in the back of his van out in the parking lot. But when she followed him, there wasn't a cute puppy in the van at all...
People could be meeting by telephone, but, you wouldn't think of suing the phone company for not doing their part to screen people would you?
;)
Good point. The phone company is a common carrier and is not responsible for what people say and do with it.
Therefore she should sue her ISP, not MySpace. After all, her ISP is likely against net neutrality, implying that they do not wish to be a common carrier, and therefore are responsible for what happens over the connections they provide...and therefore are liable when bad things happen.
This could be way, way less sinister than your suggesting.
These are slashdotters responding to an article which (I gather) makes the assumption that he's a sick pedo. So they present a plausible counter-theory. That's what I'd do, regardless of which way the article decided. If you counter a statement, at least the fair (correct) conclusion is more likely to be found than if everybody just jumps on the bandwagon for whichever explanation comes up first.
Whereas it currently reads:
...",
..."
"A 14-year-old is suing MySpace
it should read:
"An opportunist shyster is capitalizing on a 14-year-old's misfortunes to shake down MySpace
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I think this was a PR stunt by Homeland Security. It was done to convince people that the Internet should not be anonymous. They probably had a detective pose as a 14 year old.