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."

Re:Of course

[gzerphey]

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

Re:Candy

[unchiujar]

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

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

Zomg, think of the children!

[daeg]

I'm should have a kid just so I can get rich off of my own bad parenting skills.

Re:it's not the responsibility of myspace...

[bladesjester]

to babysit other people's kids.

Can you imagine if Myspace had kids?

*shudder*

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."

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.

Re:Weighing the options.

[vga_init]

I don't see a conflict; Slashdot doesn't hate Myspace so much as it hates people who use Myspace. In this case, the villians are BOTH Myspace users AND frivolous lawsuit filers. That means they are quite possibly the worst people on Earth in the eyes of Slashdot (with possible exceptions of spammers, crackpot scientists, Steve Ballmer, republicans, lawyers who are not Lawrence Lessig, some European countries, various christian denominations, the United States government, anyone associated with the RIAA, and whoever owns firmware to wireless ethernet devices).

I'm waiting for the next sequel...

[haggie]

Online Predator v. Online Alien

Re:Trust or tryst? :)

[Cervantes]

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.

Jimmy.... is that you?

Please tell me you mean 2 houses NORTH of us (the nice widow Lichtoff) and not 2 houses SOUTH of us (Aunt Flo).
And I hope to God it's not 2 houses WEST of us (strange Mr Flueffenpaenten)

Lets talk when you get home.
-Dad