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

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

[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

[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

[delt0r]

I'm thinking that perhaps they didn't go out looking for someone that will abuse them. That just who they ended up with this time. And what about all the normal girls that end up in these type of relationships? And anyway what is normal.

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

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Re:Of course

[gzerphey]

To paraphrase Bender: Have you ever tried turning off the computer, sitting down with your children, and hitting them...

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.

Re:Candy

[unchiujar]

If they exclude their underage users, what are the predators to do?. Will nobody think of the predators ?

Trust or tryst? :)

[Quiet_Desperation]

Probably not the same situation (I don't know if the girls knew the guys were older men), but when I was 17, I had a short affair with a 34 year old woman (a neighbor two houses down). I had a near perfect relationship with my parents, but do you think I told them about it? To this day they don't know.

In Other News:

[derrickh]

Gravity Sued by Old People: 'Without the 'weak force' they never would have falled and would have no need to get back up'

The Sun Sued by Skin Cancer Victims: 'The Sun knew it was hot, and still continued burning'

The Internets sued by George Bush: 'President demands and end to "plural network" joke'

Attractive Women Sued by Geeks: 'Nerds demand compensation for sweat stained shirts and ruined pants'

D

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.

[dr_dank]

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.

Indeed. Some screechy ignorant asshole who believes that the internet is trying to fuck their children and thinks they deserve a free bag of money is far more distasteful than Myspace pages that could give Helen Keller a seizure.

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: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.

"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*

A possible solution for parents

[Hoi Polloi]

Technology giveth and technology taketh away. Unless your kid is especially Windows PC savvy just do this:

Open C:\WINNT or WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in notepad
Append these lines:
# block myspace.com host names
127.0.0.1 log.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 browseusers.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 classifieds.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 collect.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 events.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 favorites.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 forum.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 groups.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 home.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 invite.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 linux.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 login.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 message.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 messages.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 music.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 mx2.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 myspace.com
127.0.0.1 ns1.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 ns2.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 profile.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 rio.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 search.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vids.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 viewmorepics.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta01.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta02.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta03.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta04.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta05.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta06.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta07.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta08.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta09.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta10.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta11.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta12.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 vmta13.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 www.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 www1.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 videos.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 mail.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 signup.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 security.myspace.com

Done!

Hell, while you are there add this one too: 127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.com

I got this from: http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/interne t/26149-how-block-myspace-com.html

MySpace needs to take action!

[Cornflake917]

FTA:

"Hopefully these lawsuits can spur MySpace into action and prevent this from happening to another child somewhere," he said. Hopefully these lawsuits can spur Myspace to make a disclamer stating:

"If you are retarded enough to meet up and give your personal information to a stranger, then please don't use this website."

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.

They've been reading Slashdot

[cascadingstylesheet]

Re: Where are the parents in these situations

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.

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.

What about parental responsibility?

[cayenne8]

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

Geez...this is like suing the street corner where young kids hang out at, and get leered at, or possibly assaulted.

I hope the case gets thrown out, but, probably will not. When did parents abdicate responsibility for monitoring, correcting and teaching their children how to avoid trouble and 'bad' people?

When did kids get so freaking stupid and gullible as to believe these predators? My parents taught me not to 'talk to strangers', etc. Heck, they let me know where the gun at home was in case when I was there alone and felt threatened. Did ever touch it but once? No....but, one time alone, some haggard guy wouldn't get off the front porch asking for water, etc. I didn't let him in...and I watch through the window and peephole, with the gun in my hand locked and loaded till he left.

I then put it back, and told my parents about it right afterwards.

I mean, what is with parents not teaching lessons to kids and making them responsible, etc? My friends and I certainly knew better than to let ourselves get into bad situations. Why don't kids know this today?

Anyway, I can't see how they can sue MySpace...it is just a public hangout, and the individual should be responsible for their actions and safety, and if the user is underage, then the parent is responsible.

Re:What about parental responsibility?

[cayenne8]

"While I agree with you regarding everything else, having a gun in your household -- let alone in the hands of a child -- can hardly be considered responsible."

Please re-read what I originally posted. While I knew where the gun was....I only touched it that one time without supervision of my parents, and after the perceived danger was over, I dropped the clip, and took the chambered shell out, and put it back in the clip....clip back in gun, gun back hidden in my parent's room, and PROMPTLY called my parents and told them.

Maybe where you live it is a bit different, but, in the south in the US, MANY homes have guns in them, we grow up with them...protection, hunting, etc. My Mom and Dad put the 'fear of God' in me if I touched it for any other reason than if my life was in danger. He also took me out with him to target practice, so I knew how to properly use the gun, and also to respect that this thing could be dangerous, and was NOT a toy.

What I was alluding to in my OP, was my parents taught me to be responsible at a young age...

I had to come home alone every day after school, and was left alone every day during the summers when I was old enough to be on my own (12-13 I think). When I came home from school...Mom taught me some cooking basics when I was old enough. It might start by me putting in frozen veggies into the crock pot that she'd started that morning, and as I got old enough to use the stove, knives..etc...I had more responsibilities to help with the family meal. It is one of the reasons I'm a pretty decent cook to this day.

All I'm getting to is, that even if parents both work (like mine), they could in the past raise a child that could be trusted and had responsibility. I'm asking why parents today cannot seem to do that same.

I'm trying to remember how old I was when the gun incident happened...I must have been in like the 5th or 6th grade...so was about 12 or 13...maybe a bit later but, around that time.

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: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.

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:I hope they fuck many more men from myspace

[xero314]

I hope the state brings charges against the parents for neglect, but thanks them for pointing it out. I think removal of their children and a couple (or more) years in prison would do it.

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

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 :)

Stupidity Law

[Ender77]

I would like to see a law passed that allow companies to countersue stupid parents who blame other people for their lack of parenting skills.

Playing Devil's Advocate

[pnuema]

Not a single thread supporting the lawsuit modded +3. Mostly comments from people who don't have kids talking about things they have no experience with (i.e. raising children), and smug comments from people who do. I don't care about my karma, so here goes:

1. It is impossible to monitor your kids all of the time. We were all kids once, and we know it is true. This has nothing to do with parenting skill.

2. MySpace has been operating for quite a while knowing full well that child predators are active on their site.

3. MySpace could certainly have done more to validate identity (registration through snail mail?), but that would have eaten into profits.

4. MySpace has made a pile of money (mainly by being bought) while operating in this manner.

So, from where I sit, MySpace has made a pile of money by being user-friendly to child predators. Why shouldn't they get sued again?

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.

I'm waiting for the next sequel...

[haggie]

Online Predator v. Online Alien

A different perspective

[BlazeMiskulin]

I haven't read through all of the responses, but two fairly distinct views are coming out: Parents need to monitor their children to protect them from predators, and parents need to teach their children to protect them from predators. And there's lots of discussion about what is and is not a "good parent".

I'd just like to make a few points:

• If good parenting requires monitoring the teen's activities online, doesn't it also follow that the parents should hover around the mall, the park, the school, the coffee shop, and the mini-golf course?
• With the exception of the one girl who was drugged, there's no mention of what constituted the "sexual assault". These girls all went willingly to a meeting with these men, there is no mention of coercion, force, or gross deception.
• How long had these girls been talking with these men? Could it be that they went to meet them specifically for "romantic" encounters, knowing full well the age differences?

Anyone who believes that 14-16 year old girls don't go looking for sexual encounters--even with significantly older men--has never dealt with teen-age girls. This isn't as one-sided as people want to make it out to be. These men weren't forcing the girls to talk to them. Other than the one young man lying that he was still in high school (he's only 19, so that's not a huge lie), we have no evidence that there was any deception going on at all. The guy who drugged the girl can definitely be considered a predator, but it's fully possible that the other guys simply got involved in a 2-way relationship which progressed to a point where both parties were willing to meet and take it further.

I'm not saying that this was the smartest move on anyone's part, but considering that--depending on the states these people are in--the sexual encounters could have been entirely consensual and legal, the situation needs to be considered from other perspectives.

Having spent many years teaching high school students, I'm quite certain that there's more to the story than is being presented in the article or the law suits.