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MySpace, News Corp. sued in assault cases

Posted by Cory Bergman on January 18, 2007

You knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Four families of girls who say they were solicited and sexually assaulted via MySpace are suing the site and its owner, News Corp. The suits allege negligence, recklessness, fraud, and negligent misrepresentation. And in each case, criminal charges have been filed against the accused MySpace users and/or their accomplices for sexual assault, CNET reports. “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, a lawyer for the families. As we reported yesterday, MySpace is launching a new application for parents to monitor some of their teen’s activity on the site.

  • Daniel

    re:MySpace is launching a new application for parents to monitor some of their teen’s activity on the site.
    That’s the death of MySpace. Teens will flee that site en mass if they know their parents are now watching their every move.

  • http://www.thepomoblog.com Terry Heaton

    I concur with Daniel.

    Also, two-thirds of mySpacers keep their profiles private, something these victims apparently did not. If mySpace provides this option, how liable should they be for activities of those who don’t exercise it?

    This lawsuit won’t stop predators, and if it doesn’t, then all it is is a bunch of lawyers making money (again) off of somebody else’s tragedy.

  • Rocker

    I don’t mean to absolve them of all responibility to take reasonable precautions, but fundamentally I don’t think MySpace should be liable. Any time you bring together 50,000,000 people, online or anywhere else, some bad things are going to happen…and good things. That’s life.

    These “bad bad internet” stories have been around pretty much since Day One. Has anyone figured out whether the rate of child abuse has gone up since the advent of the internet, I wonder? I suspect if there were such a study, and it suggested any such thing, we’d have heard about it. I do know that the # of rundown, sleazy porn theaters has dropped like a rock with video and the internet to “blame”.

    The real story on this type of thing is often counter-intuitve, and counter to the political-media complex drumbeat.

  • http://TVPHOTOGBLOG.BLOGSPOT.COM Chris Weaver

    Shall we sue the company that built the car that Michael Devlin drove when he kidnapped those boys in Missouri?

    Shall we sue the maker of the deadbolts locks or the doorframe if a person kicks in the door kid and snatches a child from their sleep?

    Shall we sue all the cities that don’t provide security at their have public parks that have been the scenes of kidnappings and abductions over the years?

    My point is that we’ve all been taught for year, “Don’t talk to strangers” and as a parent myself, with kids on the internet, I have to take that same philosophy and apply it to the internet.

    People need to learn to take personal responsibility for their actions or, in this case, their inaction of not properly teaching their children about the dangers of online predators.

    You can damn well bet my kids know.

    The internet, and not just one specific site, is a place where it’s easy to disguise yourself and do a lot of mischief on many different levels.

    (Full disclosure; I work for a News Corp TV Station)

  • http://www.sodahead.com/poll/111/ Jay

    MySpace does a lot to protect its users. Does it do enough? Who could ever say. People really don’t know how much MySpace did, at least back in 2006. As it grows under the News Corp banner, will it get more or less concerned with children safety?

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