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June 21st 2006 at 9:11 am in I just read that parents sued MySpace for $ 14 milion in damages after their child got assaulted in real life after having her profile publicly posted on a social networking site.
The lawyer stated that:
MySpace is more concerned about making money than protecting children online.
Of course, parents can’t hardly be blamed for neglecting their kids — wanting time for themselves, putting the child behind a computer in the first place.
The guy continued with:
[..] they should compensate the girl for their failure to protect her online when they knew sexual predators were on that site.
They knew sexual predators were on that site? What the hell happened to common sense?
Sexual predators are everywhere. The failure to recognize that leaves these parents, themselves, responsible, and guilty, as hell. That’s like, leaving your kids in front of the pub while getting drunk and then wonder where the hell they are at 02:30 AM and notice they have been abducted.
The family might think they find ‘peace’ in getting some compensation; but in my humble opinion, if they accept that money — it is effectively prostitution.
Anyway, the lawyer argues that:
[..] none of the registration information the site requires needs to be true, and nothing is done to verify a user’s age.
Aha — so that’s where this stuff is heading!
I was thinking this was about a sexual assault on a minor, but meanwhile it has became clear that this is all about identifiability, tracking and tracing every on-line move.
It could just be that somebody wants credit card or social security numbers, or any other unique identifier, to be required information on registration forms, naively thinking this will make all the badness in humans go away.
Or the family just wants money. That’s pretty likely as well. Although being a bit blurry, I can say one definite thing about the family’s motives: a true concerning parent wouldn’t sue for money — a concerning parent would rather see the whole operations being shut down.
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