MySpace Sued by Families of Online Predator Victims

MySpace is facing more lawsuits, as the victims of sexual predators have filed suit against the social site and parent corporation News Corp. In total, four families from across the U.S. have joined together after their underage daughters were abused by men they met via MySpace. MySpace has responded to past allegations by putting in place educational efforts and partnerships with law enforcement. The company is also developing technologies to allow parents to have some measure of access to their child's account. From the article: "'In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users,' said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer. The families are seeking monetary damages 'in the millions of dollars,' Itkin said."

Comments

I hope they fuck many more men from myspace

[Anonymous Coward]

while the parents dance all the way to the bank at their childrens expense!! YEEEHAW!

Re:I hope they fuck many more men from myspace

[pod_sixer_jay]

Or more likely, while the parents' lawyers dance all the way to the bank.

Shoot the messenger

[Hoi Polloi]

I hope they sue the highway department also because the bad guys used the public road system to meet these girls.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[Cornflake917]

Yeah, really the parents should be sueing themselves for being bad parents.

If you are a parent, and your child gets abused by some predator through a social networking website, you are a bad parent. If you are unaware about the dangers of MySpace to your kids, you need to get out from under that rock, and start taking responsiblity to keep track of what your kids are doing.

These lawsuits piss me off. I can't believe some parents just think the internet is some utopian place completely disonnected from the real world, filled with funny videos and websites to order their hardware from. There are bad people on the internet just like there are bad people in real life. You should be taking the same percautions for a kid who's sitting in front of a monitor, as a kid who's walking out the door of your house. I'm not even a fucking parent and I know this.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[spyrochaete]

Thanks for saying this. I was just about to ask why they're not suing the IEEE for developing the Internet Protocol.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[trianglman]

They aren't necessarily bad parents, unless you think that in order to be a good parent one must monitor their child's actions 100% of the time and be worse than Big Brother. However, this lawsuit is a sign of further poor parenting in that many parents are acting like its other people's jobs to be the parent of their child. In this case they expect MySpace to be the watchful parent that the litigants aren't. Good parenting would lessen the likelihood of a lot of these online pedophiles abusing victims, but not because they monitored their children constantly; it would be because the children feel comfortable talking to their parents about what they are doing. However, not all children, no matter how good the parents, are going to share their entire lives with their parents, nor are all parents going to make that level of excellence.

Most parents now have to work 50+ hours a week (with both parents working) to keep their children in good schools and pay all of the other things that need to be paid. That they aren't able to keep up with everything their children do isn't a sign of their quality of parenting, its a human limitation. But blaming MySpace is not the answer, and this lawsuit is incredibly stupid.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I tend to agree- you can't watch your children all the time. But whose fault is it if you've given your little girl a private school education, but not enough love and attention that she has to go out and seek it from somebody who will abuse her? Is it really worth the material wealth to work 50 hours a week yet miss out on giving your kids the non-material attention that they need?

Re:Shoot the messenger

[MoonBuggy]

I see what you mean, but I would tend to look at this from the "Teach a man a fish..." perspective. Rather than monitoring what the child is doing and making the decisions for them (which will simply leave them incapable of acting on their own), it seems to me that it is the job of the parent(s) to teach the child how to make the sensible decision on if it's really a good idea to meet random MySpace people at all, and if so who to meet, where to meet them and who to bring along. Once the child actually understands the point, they can decide for themselves, no monitoring needed.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[DrScotsman]

If you are a parent, and your child gets abused by some predator through a social networking website, you are a bad parent. If you are unaware about the dangers of MySpace to your kids, you need to get out from under that rock, and start taking responsiblity to keep track of what your kids are doing.

I glimpsed over TFA, the girls are aged 14 and 15. I am speaking as a 17 year old saying that 14 is maybe borderline, but every 15 year old girl I know in school is definitely smart enough not to meet up with someone on the internet like that. The lawsuit is retarded, but I'd definitely not blame the parents. Law may have to define an age below which everyone is automatically stupid (18/21/etc.), but in reality this certainly isn't true.

Granted, the parents probably didn't do what I'd expect them to do, which is simply tell them not to meet up with people over the Internet. They may be bad parents for THAT, but not for not checking every single damn URL accessed and email sent by them.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[Deagol]

Most parents now have to work 50+ hours a week (with both parents working) to keep their children in good schools and pay all of the other things that need to be paid. That they aren't able to keep up with everything their children do isn't a sign of their quality of parenting, its a human limitation.

No, it's a sign of rampant consumerism. I'm raising a family of 4 on 16.75/hr @ 4hr/day (that's $17420/yr). I work from home and we home school the kids. One $40,000 1200-ft^2 house, one $16,000 truck, and a handful of low utilities. No unsecured debt, no payday loans, no over-indulgence on shiny things. We live well and eat even better (Ever eat home-raised pork? It don't get much better than that.) The boogie-man of "good schools" causing people to flee to rich 'burbs with good schools and "force" over-worked families to never see each other is the result of good marketing and media scaremongering, and the gullibility of the general population.

But blaming MySpace is not the answer, and this lawsuit is incredibly stupid.

Indeed.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'm thinking that perhaps they didn't go out looking for someone that will abuse them.

No, they went out looking for someone who would give them the attention they weren't getting from their parents.

That just who they ended up with this time.

Yes, but if they were getting that attention from their families, they wouldn't need to go looking for others.

And what about all the normal girls that end up in these type of relationships? And anyway what is normal.

Normal is meeting somebody at school and bringing him home to meet your parents before dating him. Normal is spending time with your parents and immediate family instead of on MySpace. But it's not the girl's fault- she wouldn't be spending time on MySpace if her immediate family had paid the proper attention to begin with.

Good people can come from very dark family backgrounds. Bad kids can come from loving families.

Also true. But here's the kicker- kids who have time to get into trouble come from families that don't spend enough time together.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[drinkypoo]

They aren't necessarily bad parents, unless you think that in order to be a good parent one must monitor their child's actions 100% of the time and be worse than Big Brother.

Personally, I think that what they need to do is raise children capable of making good decisions, and that is clearly not what they have done. I don't know about y'all, but my mommy taught me to avoid strangers, not to get into their cars or accept things from them, et cetera. And you know what? She didn't tell it to me in a stupid baby voice or otherwise insult my intelligence, so I listened to her. Mind you, I didn't listen to everything she told me - but she managed to raise me in such a manner that I was capable of making reasonable judgments.

Most people treat their children like babies well into adolescence. They switch up to treating them like adolescents sometime around the time they're a teenager. They never really treat them like an adult, an equal. Then they wonder on their deathbed what happened to their relationship with their kids.

However, not all children, no matter how good the parents, are going to share their entire lives with their parents, nor are all parents going to make that level of excellence.

Their entire lives? That's not remotely what we're talking about here and frankly it is not necessary if you arm your children with the confidence to make good decisions, and if you instill in them the confidence in you necessary for them to listen to you. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have personally watched parents lie to their children. They seem to think that does not have repercussions. Children do not forget when you lie to them; if you're full of shit, they will remember, and they will have less regard for anything you say subsequently. At some point I got tired of my mother (who did her best, bless her heart) giving me bullshit answers to questions to which she did not know the answers, and I stopped asking her pretty much everything.

Most parents now have to work 50+ hours a week (with both parents working) to keep their children in good schools and pay all of the other things that need to be paid.

And that's somehow MySpace's fault? Actually I don't agree that it's even the case for most families. If you look at the majority of these households that are whining about how both parents have to work so many long hours and all that shit, they tend to have a new[ish] car in the driveway that they're making payments on, they've chosen to live in a place that has high rents and for that matter they are renting something nice instead of buying something acceptable and working up. In short, they are living beyond their means. Then, because they are living beyond their means and do not have time to raise their children (the most important job they will ever have) they want other people to raise their children for them.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone in financial trouble did it to themselves. Bad things happen to good people. But the majority of Americans are in debt not just for things they need, but things they don't. They give in to their kids and buy them brand-name clothing, some big fancy backpack with flashing lights and shit, and hundred dollar sneakers. Then they complain that they have to work their asses off to give them a good life. Well, that's not a good life, it's a commercialized life, and in the process they support slave labor and all that wonderful shit.

I'm tired of hearing the argument that people don't have time to raise their kids. Nothing is more important than raising your children properly, and that doesn't mean that you have to live in the lap of luxury. If people didn't spend so much money keeping their children entertained so that they wouldn't have to do any parenting, they wouldn't need as much money. If they didn't need the SUV status symbol to protect daddy's ego, then they could buy a used minivan which would not only be cheaper, but which would get better mileage and be safer to boot.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[ferat]

Given that he mentions home raised pork, he lives somewhere where that would be allowed.

My guess: quite rural. You can get a $40k house if you are willing to live nowhere near a metropolis.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[Marxist Hacker 42]

These predators don't just target children that don't get enough love and attention, they target any that they think that can be drawn out and will use any vector they can.

Only kids who don't get enough love an attention CAN be drawn out by a vector. The kid who is getting enough love and attention doesn't have the time for strangers- their time is taken up by their immediate family.

As far as the "Is it worth it" question; as far as I have seen (I haven't experienced this personally yet, my son is only 2), but sometimes its not about material wealth, often times parents are forced into situations like these just to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table, utilities running, and put their kids in decent schools. They are left with a decision of which is worse, a poorer education and more limited opportunities later in life or less time spent with the kids. This isn't true in all cases, but in most middle class situations I can understand it.

I can understand it to some extent- but I'd point out that if the choice is between a poorer education and a juvenile delequent, you're better off with the poorer education.

Now lower middle class- with both parents having skillsets worth less than $24,000/year, for instance- there's no way to do it. Which explains why the children of illegal immigrants often become gangsters and criminals. But for anybody with a college degree, then with careful savings there's room for everything.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[Deagol]

I wrote a shell script to scrape every zipcode (on a per-state basis) from realtor.com, and I searched several states for houses $20k and under. If you're willing to eek out a living in a severely economically depressed area (say, if you telecommute like I do), there are plenty to be found out there. This was to facilitate a potential move to a new region.

That's not how I found my current digs, however. That was pure luck and patience.

Homes in this price range will never be featured on the cover of Martha Stewart Living, but they do just fine for those who are not obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[trianglman]

Only kids who don't get enough love an attention CAN be drawn out by a vector. The kid who is getting enough love and attention doesn't have the time for strangers- their time is taken up by their immediate family.

So you are advocating taking up all of your child's time so they don't have free time to spend online? These sites like MySpace aren't where kids go when they aren't getting enough attention at home. They go there to talk with their friends and share stories. They aren't there looking for someone to replace mommy and daddy, they are looking for other people who share their view, which, no matter how good a parent you are, won't always be you.

I can understand it to some extent- but I'd point out that if the choice is between a poorer education and a juvenile delequent, you're better off with the poorer education.

I'm not sure I understand this choice here. Does an abuse victim qualify as a 'juvenile delenquent'? The choice, as most people see it, is between a poorer education where their child won't have as many options and fewer chances for success and less time spent with the child, while still providing a happy and healthy household.

But for anybody with a college degree, then with careful savings there's room for everything.

Ignoring the rest of your somewhat racist statement... College debt is one of the most prevalent debts out there, it is the reason college graduates have to work 40-50 hours a week for 20 years.

Re:Shoot the messenger

[Dread_ed]

Sometimes the tough part is convincing your budding teens that you are actually advising them in an affort to help them. At that age, there is an ingrained (IMHO) belief that parents are just trying to fuck up all of our fun in life.

My wife and I have totally won over our oldest by a few simple excercises. First we have had open and frank converstaions with her about all subjects. She is informed on all the subjects that she has questions about and some that she never did question because we thought it was proper that she was prepared and not ignorant.

Second, we allow her to make many decisions that we do not agree with 100% (within limits, no need to call CPS). We preface this with discussion of why we think this is the wrong thing for her, caution her about what she needs to be careful of, and most importantly, we tell her in no uncertain terms what we think the outcome will be. This teaches her, in our opinion, responsibility for her actions and the true value of her parent's approval and counsel. The fact that we have made the right call much more often than not with our predictions is well in our favor.

The result? Now all we have to do is caution our daughter about certain actions and behaviors and she does the rest. By the rest I mean that she asks us why we think it is a bad idea and is truly interested in what we think and say. Then she thinks about what we have told her and comes to a decision.

For my wife and I it is the best possible outcome. We dont want automatons for children. People like that make good wage-slaves, but we don't want that limitation to come as a result of our upbringing.

The freedom we give her in certain areas is not only a way to create a free thinking adolescent that is independent and strong, but also a test to see where she is heading mentally and socially. It helps us to figure out where we need to apply gentle pressure and lets us get a good glimpse of what is going on inside her head.

Candy

[unchiujar]

I guess suing for millions of dollars is better than educating their kids not to accept candy from strangers...

Re:Candy

[couchslug]

MySpace and all other online activities should simply have EULAs that exclude underage users, and write appropriate self-protective clauses into it as needed. Stupid parents are never going to educate their children, so any expectation that this will change is irrational.

Great idea

[Renraku]

Go ahead and sue the mall for not protecting your children.

Your ISP for transmitting the email.

Dell for supplying you with the computer.

Finally, Ikea for supplying the desk/chair that your daughter sat on to correspond with the predator. Without them, she probably wouldn't have made contact and talked to the predator.

All of this could have probably been prevented by proper education/supervision. But its easier to sue than it is to raise a kid.

Re:Great idea

[kaizenfury7]

Just out of curiousity, is there any precedence for parents being charged with parental negligence in this type of situation? This would go a long way in encouraging/coercing parents to be accountable for their children.

Of course

[DragonMageWTF]

Because parenting your own children is so old fashioned.

it's not the responsibility of myspace...

[jcgam69]

...to babysit other people's kids.

I know...

[IflyRC]

That there is going to be a lot of responses claiming how it is the parent's responsibility and that MySpace is of no fault. Still though, if you look at it from a different viewpoint...maybe that of how bars are sometimes legally responsible for the deaths in drunk driving accidents should a person leave the establishment with the bartender/employees knowing they are not fit to drive.

Re:I know...

[Anonymous Coward]

The bar analogy doesn't work.

The bartender has a legal responsibility to make a determination as to whether the patron has already had too much and whether to serve them. Even though they frequently do not make that decision for their patron, their license to serve alcohol is on the line each time that someone leaves their establishment too drunk to drive.

MySpace has no such legal obligation. They are not able to directly view their users and make determinations about who is being truthful.

Re:I know...

[Deagol]

if you look at it from a different viewpoint...maybe that of how bars are sometimes legally responsible for the deaths in drunk driving accidents should a person leave the establishment with the bartender/employees knowing they are not fit to drive.

That's no less lame than this lawsuit is. Just because there is much nanny-state-ism deeply entrenched in the country, we shouldn't support more of the same.

Re:I know...

[psykocrime]

Still though, if you look at it from a different viewpoint...maybe that of how bars are sometimes legally responsible for the deaths in drunk driving accidents should a person leave the establishment with the bartender/employees knowing they are not fit to drive

Those cases are bullshit just like this is though. Individuals are responsible for their own actions... it's ridiculous to think that my actions (getting drunk, driving, getting in a wreck) can in any way involuntarily impose any sort of legal obligation on someone else (bartender, bar owner).

Now I'll accept that it might not be ethical for a bar to continue serving someone who is wasted, at least without checking to see if they're driving, but unethical != illegal.

Re:I know...

[pod_sixer_jay]

Consider some salient differences.

Myspace provides communication. Communication is not inherently predatory. Bars provide alcohol. Alcohol is inherently intoxicating to humans. The proprietor of a bar knows that alcohol exceeding some amount will necessarily produce intoxication. Myspace operators cannot know that communication in any amount will necessarily result in sexual predation. There is a fundamental qualitative difference between what these two kinds of service provide.

Let's say your bar has 20,000,000 patrons and is largely self-service. To what extent should you be held liable to verify the inebriation of each one of them? There is a fundamental quantitative difference between each service's clientele.

Primary responsibility for the safety of some minor rests on those closest to the minor, not with some distant corporation. If the parents failed to instruct their minor children about the dangers of communicating with strange adults and failed to pay sufficient attention to their children's activities, then I cannot see why they have been injured by the actions of Myspace. In the wake of the Columbine High School shooting, the parents of the perpetrators were taken to task for not having paid appropriate attention to what their children were doing. Now the shoe is on the other foot: other parents who have failed in exactly the same way now claim to be the victims themselves.

Re:I know...

[Ogive17]

playing devil's advocate...

Now I'll accept that it might not be ethical for a bar to continue serving someone who is wasted, at least without checking to see if they're driving, but unethical != illegal.
I believe it is illegal in some places to serve someone who is obviously drunk already. And before people start saying "it's the consumer's choice to keep drinking" think of this.. The last time you were wasted, did you get to the point where you said "oh, I think I'm drunk enough now, no more beer for me!" or was it more like "foiaeaf fuck wooo i'm drvnk... give me another!". You get to the point where you can't make sound decisions on your own.

But this has no relevance to myspace. You can't blame myspace, and you necessarily can't put all the blame on the parents either. One thing I haven't seen yet is blaming the girls who did this. I'm not sure how old they were, but by the time I was 8 I knew things I should not be doing. I didn't always heed that advice, but I knew it was wrong.

You failed

[Anonymous Coward]

You failed to do my job for me by protecting my child from his/her own stupidity. Now you must make me rich.

Re:You failed

[PFI_Optix]

Correction:

You failed to do my job for me by protecting my child from my own inability to monitor their activity and teach them how to make good decisions. Now you must make me rich.

I have been online since I was 11

[Com2Kid]

I knew better than to post any personal information.

My real name did not appear on the web until I was 18.

This is a story of Darwinism in action.

The parents should be sued for not raising their kids right...

Parents Tell Your Children...

[e4g4]

...Not to agree to meet with some stranger they met online! No matter how "kewl" he seems. How difficult is that?

Re:Parents Tell Your Children...

[delt0r]

So how often did you disobey your parents? Say just once, or lots of times. Were not talking about a 5 year old. We are talking about 13+ something and doing what parents tell them is not a strong point in that age group.

shifting blame

[night_flyer]

Its not the criminal, its the gun
Its not the owner, its the pit bull
Its not the parents, its the website

Where are the parents in these situations

[jackelfish]

I am in no way condoning the behavior of the predators skulking around the internet, but I really do not see how this is My Space's responsibility. I know of several families that have their computer situated off in the basement or in their child's room and will leave them unattended for hours with their high speed connection and webcam. I have no idea where the families in this story kept their computers, but a little diligence on a parents part, in my opinion, goes a long way. If the kids stumble onto these situations and get entrapped by these people, how is suing News Corp going to make any difference at the end of the day? There will always be sexual predators out there and there will always be children looking for attention. I think that the solution to this problem is already at home.

How is MySpace like a daycare center?

[netbuzz]

They're exactly alike, at least according to the Texas lawyer who who filed this asinine suit. He says "these virtual sites are no different" than a daycare center in terms of their responsibilities to keep children safe. I went off on a bit of a rant this morning on my blog trying to explain the difference to him, if you're interested:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1057 4

Weighing the options.

[Kelson]

This story is a great example of what happens when two values come into conflict. When MySpace comes up on Slashdot, the general tone is usually one of dismissal, disregard, and disgust. Most people at Slashdot -- at least, the most vocal ones -- look down on MySpace for technical, aesthetic, social or political reasons.

But frivolous lawsuits are even more reviled, particularly those which could produce a chilling effect on free speech. (Taken to an extreme, the idea that MySpace is at fault would lead to every online site with so much as a guestbook being liable for anything that happens as a result of people posting there.)

The result: Every comment I've seen on this thread (ok, there are only about 20 of them) has been in MySpace's favor. Not what you'd expect from Slashdot, until you factor in the bigger picture.

Re:Weighing the options.

[Aqua_boy17]

I think it's also a case of us all being sick of frivilous litigation. We've had it with the "I'm a fat tard, let's go sue McDonalds, Wendys, KFC..." type lawsuits and this one falls in that category, IMHO. The /. community is not so much defending MySpace as it is condemning these type of ridiculous suits that do nothing but enrich the trial attorneys. And until people who bring frivilous litigation to the courts are held accountable for wasting the Court's (read Taxpayer's) time and money, it's not going to change.

On another level, I've also always had something of a problem with the "It takes a village to raise a child" mentality. It's one thing for a community to work together to promote a safe environment for kids. But it's quite another to expect the schools, your neighbors, television, the web, Wii's and whatever else to raise your children for you. It's the parent's responsibility and the most important one that they will ever have. Generally speaking, bad things don't happen nearly as often to children who's parents are actively involved in their lives.

Because it's just never *your* fault

[lorenlal]

I figured it was only a matter of time before this happened. Has AOL been sued for their chatrooms? Actually, yes they have...

One thing that upsets me is that MySpace is already taking steps to correct this.

But it doesn't matter because these parents are teaching their kids that it's okay to not take responsibility for their own actions. Do whatever you want, and if something goes bad, sue someone for letting you screw up. It's not your fault that you stuck your hand in the outlet, there was nothing stopping you.

We are now operating on the assumption that people lack the basic instinct of self preservation. It's one thing to lie or mislead. It's another to give people something with good intentions, but hold them responsible when others abuse it. It's a whole other thing when the owners are already trying to curb the abuse and are doing what I consider *due diligence.*

It's stupid, and these parents are stupid for blaming the service for their kids' screwups. I'm sorry this happened to your kids. I'm sorry that *you* didn't teach your kids that strangers can be dangerous. Own up and hold those actually responsible accountable.

Re:Because it's just never *your* fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to point out that the assumption around here seems to be that underage girls were raped by dirty old perverts.

The article states that this suit was filled by the parents of 14 and 15 year old girls. It also mention a similar suit following the sexual assault (note that the guy was not convicted of rape) by a 19 years old (the only perpetrator whose age is given).

Beyond the sue-happy bad parents issue, another problem is that our society doesn't want to realize that 14 year old girls are sexually mature. Quite a few of them will get sexually involved, most of them with older blokes, simply because guys mature later, and inevitably some of them will be 18 to 20.

"Lawsuit" is much easier to say than "responsible"

[RyoShin]

I know this isn't an original idea on Slashdot, but perhaps, you know, the parents could have monitored the children! But that's crazy talk, because then they might not have been able to watch the entire two hour season premiere of American Idol or follow their stocks. The internet, government, and everyone involed in those things should be worried about the life that the parent brought into the world, not the parent! After all, they created the kid, shouldn't that be enough?

All of the things that MySpace has been sued for could easily have been prevented with good parenting. Where are your kids going? Who are they talking to online? Sure, they can lie, but that's why you keep tabs. When they get back, ask them if they had a good time at some other place. If they respond postively, you've just caught them in a lie. If not, you can fake like it's old-people confusion. You can't always protect them, though, so educate them. Make sure they understand that they can meet a lot of cool people on the internet, but some of these people want to hurt them. It's okay to talk to someone, but if someone wants to meet them you (the parent) have to get involved.

Here's a newsflash to these un-parents: Myspace isn't the only place where this kind of thing can be done! It is, however, one of the higher profile and richer websites, hence the lure. The potential for these acts have been around since the Internet has. I can recall being sent a picture of some guy's dick in an e-mail when I was 13 (8 years ago) or so because I gave him my e-mail address thinking he was going to send me cheat codes for a video game. At that time I had to go to the library to chat, because my parents wouldn't let me chat online at home. So I wound up in an unsupervised environment where I could have given out more information about myself or location if someone had taken me into their confidence.

While you're at it, why not sue the mall, store, or park where the pedo and kid met up? After all, the kid was there and the mall/store/park didn't bother to watch your kid for you, either.

What happened to the kids was horrible, and from the article at least some of those who actually did the harm have been locked up. This is good. But what happened on MySpace can (and probably does) happen on any other social site, in various large-scale chat rooms, even through e-mail groups. They shouldn't be sued for it.

Victim mentality

[Jadecristal]

I'm getting REALLY tired of the victim mentality that people seem to have ANY time something goes wrong in their lives. Nothing that happens to them is EVER their fault, nor a result of choices they made. In this case, the parents filing suits can't acknowledge that THEY failed to teach, watch over, and ultimately protect their children; it must have been someone else's fault for not doing it for them.

The failure of people to take responsibility for what they do - along with the general sense of entitlement that people seem to have for everything from "free" food to "free" retirement benefits at the hands of the government - is speeding not just their own demise, but the demise of everyone's freedoms. More laws get enacted to prevent so-called frivolous lawsuits, preventing people who NEED to sue from suing, and the government takes more and more money to fund "just one more social program, 'for the children.'"

*rant mode off, flamesuit mode on*

How?

[Kelson]

• How does an online chat service verify that someone is not lying about his age? Require a photo? Too easy to submit someone else's. Credit card = adult, no credit card = minor? Kids an grab their parents' cards. Adults can pretend they don't have one. Trivia questions about pup culture in the 1970s and today, to see which ones they get right? Have each subscriber walk into the local MySpace office to get verified in person? They can send someone else in and use their account.
• How does an online chat services verify that someone is not a sexual predator? Do a background check on every one of those 100 million members? At best you can determine that someone is not a convicted sex offender, but even that assumes they're providing their real name.

These things happen...

[Pojut]

...because people believe and follow christ. Or adonai. Or allah. Or any other organized-religious deity.

They are so used to passing off their responsabilities and being forgiven, they forget what it means to take ownership of their own fuck-up.

Mod me troll or flamebait if you want. I am being completely serious.

Rules of the internet

[LordEd]

Rule 1: A person claiming to be an attractive female teen is one of the following until proven otherwise:
1. A 57 year old man who rides a scooter
2. A law enforcement agent
3. A criminal out to steal your soul

Re:Rules of the internet

[JimBobJoe]

A criminal out to steal your soul

I have found the difference between that and a teenage female to be nauseatingly imperceptible.

Give me a friggin break.

[necro2607]

Come on, give me a break. This is just downright stupid.

I'm so sick of people freaking out about online social sites. Take legal action against the criminal.

People are able to meet people in a huge huge variety of ways. You can just stand on the street and meet people! Are we going to start suing our cities for offering a place for sexual predators to attack potential victims (parking lots, alley ways, etc.)?

It's so hard not to feel angry about this. Myspace is a completely legitimate site to meet people, socialize, check out some bands, etc. If you're meeting someone on Myspace (or ANY online social site) and choosing to meet them in person, sending them suggestive pictures, giving them your phone number, that is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. YOU are choosing to do all of these things.

I've been on Myspace since 2004, have been in contact with hundreds of hundreds of people, and it's damn easy for me to realize I shouldn't give out my phone number, address, or even real name. It's just common fucking sense! Unless you like getting prank called at 4AM in the morning, or worse, having some kind of predator type person showing up in the middle of the night, or whatever, keep your information private!

Hypocrisy at its finest

[DerekLyons]

You failed to do my job for me by protecting my child from my own inability to monitor their activity and teach them how to make good decisions.

Once again - Slashdot displays it's hypocrisy and double standards.
 
Whenever parental monitoring is proposed - all the highly moderated comments are the ones crying about how parents shouldn't be Big Brother, tracking their physical locations and online activities is unethical and shows a lack of trust in the child, etc... etc... But when a child becomes a victim - all of the sudden the parents are villified because they didn't do those things.

Re:Hypocrisy at its finest

[Ohrion]

Slashdot has no standards, it's the standards of the individual posters that are represented. I doubt the mentioned comments were by the same people. Personally I believe that this case should be thrown out of court and the parents reprimanded severely. Asking your children what they are doing and taking an active role in as many of their experiences as possible is an important aspect of raising a child. If this had happened to one of my children, I would be devastated with grief as well as GUILT for not doing my job.

Re:Hypocrisy at its finest

[redcane]

There may be a fine line, but there is one. The monitoring tool a parent needs, is knowing where their child is, having some idea of who they are spending time with, and some assesment of the character of those persons. They don't need to know the intimate details of their daughters chats with his/her friends and potential boyfriends/girlfriends, just like they don't need to read the childs diary. They should have enough of a channel of communication open with their child to know how far to trust them. They should educate their child to know when to walk away from or avoid a situation.
In my opinion, myspace comes into the "conversations between friends" category, but it is also the "where you are, who you are spending time with category". The parents should ask about their friends (from myspace or otherwise). The other thing to remember is that none of these children got abused *on* myspace. They met someone in real life. Now when I was young, my parents knew where I physically was. I expect to know where my kids are too. I expect them not to be meeting people from the internet, at least not without taking reasonable steps to ensure safety (e.g. meeting them at home in presence of parents.)
I hope I showed how this is not hypocritical. You don't need myspace monitoring tools as a parent to know dropping your 14/15 yr old daughter off at 19 year old random males place is a bad idea. You should have enough of a leash or alternaticely trust with the child to know they aren't going to make their own way there, or invite strangers to your home. If you can't trust them enough, or keep track of them closely enough to know they aren't getting into trouble then you may as well cut off the phone, and lock them in the basement now.

To society:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad parents maybe, but their daughters are sluts, and chances are so are yours -- but yours are better at hiding it.

Re:It's the parents responsibility...

[geekoid]

"If you have a mean dog in your fenced yard and someone trespasses and gets bit you can be sued. If you put up a sign that says "Beware of Dog" the lawyer may just argue that you knew the dog was dangerous and the warning sign you put up is proof."

Cite (as opposed to site)?
Link?
I hear this a lot, but I can't find a case.

"I remember there was a case where a bicycle manufacturer got sued because some kid got hit by a car while riding one of their bikes at night with no light"

Cite? Link?
perhaps you remember some urban myth probably started by an insurance company?

osr popular urban tails about lawsuits are false, or grossly misrepresented in the example.

And the reason you are not a moron is...

[Per Abrahamsen]

... that /. really is a hive mind, so it is perfectly fair and reasonable to accuse /. for hypocrisy when one poster in one thread displays an opinion that conflicts with another poster in another thread.

Re:And the reason you are not a moron is...

[scotsalmon]

Nice job yourself replying to a statement never made. The "moron"'s comment didn't compare a poster here to another poster in another thread. The "moron" noted that highly-rated comments in other threads express views that are possibly inconsistent with the highly-rated comments in this thread. /. isn't a hive mind, but in aggregate, the moderation reflects a collective opinion. The collective opinion in other threads the "moron" alludes to has been that, generally, people (including children? teenagers? not clear) should not be subject to intrusive monitoring of their 'net activities. The collective opinion in this thread is that people are responsible for their own actions, unless they are children, in which case their parents are (in part? largely? not clear) responsible for their actions.

The conflict (I think the "moron" went over the top in calling it "hypocrisy") comes down to how much monitoring of children by parents collective opinion would consider to be reasonable. Just to make it interesting let's call the child a 17-year-old high school senior. If she ends up assaulted by someone she met online she should have been more closely monitored in her 'net use? After being a responsible computer user for 15 years?

Other posters in this thread have noted that a daughter in a "good" family wouldn't get into this situation because she would tell her parents about the relationship, etc. I think it's pretty bold to judge a person guilty of being a bad parent just because a teenage daughter doesn't tell them about every guy she meets. It's not like these guys are advertising themselves as sleazy child molesters -- she might well consider him a friend, a guy her age from a neighboring town. I suspect the perverts know how to make themselves sound like reasonable people.

Disclaimer: Amen to those who say this is a ridiculous lawsuit, it really is. But it's just strange that so many posts are so over the top blaming flat-out bad parents. There is an obvious person to blame here: the child molester. Sometimes the bad guy wins and that doesn't mean the good guys need to take sides and blame other good guys.

-Scot

Re:They've been reading Slashdot

[Cheesey]

Well, they've been reading Slashdot. They took our advice and didn't monitor their children's internet use, because we know that monitoring is fascist.

Monitoring your young children = Good parenting.
Monitoring your grown-up children = Overparenting.
Monitoring other people's children = Fascism.

Treat Kids Like Adults

[6ame633k]

I have a solution for parents - treat your kids the way YOUR Employer treats YOU!

Employers place the monitors outward for a good reason - they want to make sure their employees are working instead of spending hours playing solitaire. So, to mimic this setup simply remove computers from bedrooms and place them in the family room where you can see what they are doing. Have the monitor facing out into the room - just like work! For an added effect build tiny, depressing grey cubicles, it will make them want to get outside and play!

Then, restrict website access. Can you surf for pr0n at work? Well, maybe if you work for Playboy, but most of us can't - why should your kid be able to look at nude chicks when you are not even allowed? Turn on parental controls - and learn how to use them. Of course, the odds are your kids are smarter than you and can turn them off, that's why moving the computer where you can see it is so effective.

Monitor site passwords. That's right - your employer can read your email anytime they please, why should your kids have it any different? Spot check on occasion to make sure they are not planning a columbine style attack or talking to MySpace predators.

Restrict time usage. If you don't get your work done at work you can't play on the computer either. Why? because you are fired! Computers are for work, so only allow them for fun if they do the work first! After homework is complete allow some MySpacing or on-line gaming for 1 hour. After the hour is up restrict entertainment to solo game play (no Internet access) or T.V. You don't have time to monitor them for 3 hours any more than your employer has time to watch you.

When they whine "it's not fair" say..."well, take it up with my boss."

Re:What about parental responsibility?

[authority69]

I'm going to file suit against the parents of these children because "In my view, the parents waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their own children."

Re:What about parental responsibility?

[Zizkus]

Totally agree,

1) Parents provide kiddies with unfettered internet access and allow them to be online unsupervised without even the basics of common smarts training.

2) Kids get in trouble.

3) Parents don't want to face the fact that it is there responsibility to train and supervise their offspring and want someone to blame for what happened.

4) Sue MySpace like it's somehow their fault.

Hell, There probably were predators on Compuserve when it was dial up at 1200 BAUD, I know I had someone invite me to chat and when I accepted launch a trojan script that mimicked Compuserve's text based login and requested login credentials, not being too gullible even then, I just terminated the connection and dialed back in.

I've always wondered about this

[bmajik]

When I was younger, a neighbor kid was shot by one of the other kids in the neighborhood. This was in a horrible town in Texas, and it was an accident.

Even so, the neighbor kid's parents sued the other family and got a pretty good chunk of money. They got a new TV and a bunch of other things that white trash buy when they come into some money.

I was about 10 years old at the time. But even then, it struck me. "Is this what your son was worth to you? This is the replacement? A big TV and more shit in your shit filled house?"

I lost my mom when i was 9, but at no point did i figure that i had any entitlements coming my way from society. From God - sure. He and I were through.. but nobody owed me anything. As a coping mechanism, I asked my dad if I was going to start getting lots of extra presents. When I was younger, we had met a family where the father had passed away and the kids were showered with toys all the time. He and I both knew i was "joking" (joking as a coping mechanism).

I dont think there can be much of anything more devastating to a young girl than rape or other coerced sex acts (I'm assuming what happened here was only partly consentual..) But it's not clear that a big pile of money is going to make that better now. Where is this money going to go? To pay for the counseling the girl needs? For hymen reconstruction? Maybe it could be donated to to a battered womens shelter or something meaningful? To what extent are the parents saying "if you're going to enable the sexual assault of our daughter, that is forsale for $zzz".

It's not clear what mySpace could do better here. Block the display / transfer of pictures from those under 16 to those over 19? It would be one thing if mySpace was ONLY setup to allow sexual exploitation of minors. Putting a bus stop in a bad part of town is arguably as much of risk as the way myspace works.

We hosted a technology day for middle school and high school girls here at work recently. It was pretty cool, but i was pretty alarmed that one of the prizes was a web cam. One of the things we did was a seminar on online safety for kids/girls, but then we turned around and gave out cameras. Oops :)

Re:What about parental responsibility?

[Original Replica]

Your independent and responsible attitude clashes with the vicitm mentality of the masses. If all societal problems are not funneled through the courts and government programs, how are we to be ensured of our much needed protective control by our beloved leaders?

Re:Playing Devil's Advocate

[fireboy1919]

Forget about whose to blame. Lets talk about law. Myspace isn't breaking it.

What gives the government the right to tell Myspace that their service must not be anonymous when most of the rest of the internet gets to be?

If we're going to have a change, it needs to be a change that everybody agrees to make - a change to the system itself; to how we connect to the internet. I don't think that's going to happen, though. The anonymous protection is sort of a double-edged sword: while it keeps predators safe, it also keeps the young anonymous unless they reveal themselves.

Which is very much what I'd like to continue. I was quite angry when the DMV forced my 18 year old sister to put a big, red "UNDER 21" sign on the bottom of her car tag. Leave anonymity alone. Taking it away does more harm than good.

Re:Playing Devil's Advocate

[Jack Sombra]

"2. MySpace has been operating for quite a while knowing full well that child predators are active on their site."
So have malls, cinemas, street corners or pretty much anywhere else you can think of...with the most common place being the family home or a relations home. So your point is? Only way anything could operate and guarantee child predators could not operate is.....actually there is no way except to kill all children in the world

"3. MySpace could certainly have done more to validate identity (registration through snail mail?), but that would have eaten into profits"
No it would have shut the site down, period. And guess what would happen then? Another site would just start up run by someone else

"MySpace has made a pile of money by being user-friendly to child predators. Why shouldn't they get sued again?"
No myspace has made a ton of money being user-friendly, thats it.

Re:What about parental responsibility?

[Unknown_monkey]

I second your story. Grew up in the South, similar experiences, I knew where the pistol was, the bolt action (and how to assemble it because it was kept in a carry case) and at my grandparents there were shotguns and ammo in every room (due to past bad experiences where the gun was what kept them safe until the police arrive)
And the 5 of us children and my cousins knew that those guns were for use in an emergency when we were old enough and touching those for any other reason meant severe punishment (usually a hard spanking and then not being able to stay home alone until you re-earned the trust)
The problem today is that you can't discipline your children without someone calling child services. If I had ever called the police because I had been spanked hard, the 20 minutes until the cops got there would have been much worse than what I had already experienced.

Re:What about parental responsibility?

[bky1701]

The problem is the "padded room" mentality. People expect kids to know how to act without ever being shown the reason- sometimes not even told. You being allowed to target practice can be compared to the kids whom are told absolutely nothing about guns, never allowed to see them, etc... they do not know the power they have.

Kids are not seen as human beings, they are seen as ether a pet or a trophy, and thus protected at all costs... but in the long run, the one most protected is the one least able to protect themselves. Kids who never are allowed to do anything that could be "dangerous" have no idea what to do when such a thing happens without someone to protect them.

Whatever happened to "learning from mistakes" and "learning from experience"? Both concepts seem totally lost in the nanny, do-your-homework-or-else state we live in.