Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
I believe the lawyer is trying to call for more security for the 16s on the site.
The lawsuit claims that the Web site does not require users to verify their age and calls the security measures aimed at preventing strangers from contacting users younger than 16 "utterly ineffective."
But the part of the article that really caught my eye was the following:
Lauren Gelman, associate director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, said she does not think MySpace is legally responsible for what happens away from its site.
"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."
This lawsuit is just ambulance chasing.
liqbase
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;
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 .......
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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.........
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.