MySpace Victims To Sue

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The families of children who became victims of sexual predators who trolled MySpace looking for victims have joined together for a Super Lawsuit. I would predict that there will be lots more of this to come, and soon LiveJournal, Facebook and other social networking sites that allow free access to children will be sued too.

From the AP here:

NEW YORK - Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.

The families are seeking monetary damages “in the millions of dollars,” Itkin said.

“Hopefully these lawsuits can spur MySpace into action and prevent this from happening to another child somewhere,” he said.

The lawyers who filed the latest lawsuits said the plaintiffs include a 15-year-old girl from Texas who was lured to a meeting, drugged and assaulted in 2006 by an adult MySpace user, who is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Texas after pleading guilty to sexual assault.

This is merely a question of liability. And MySpace is plenty liable. In court, a judge will determine whether or not, after MySpace became aware that sexual predators were using the site to stalk children, did MySpace do everything it could to prevent harm to children?

I say the answer is no. NewsCorp, the owner of Myspace, needed to take Myspace to a for-pay site as soon as they purchased the company. With a credit card purchase for a MySpace account, there would be no question regarding identity of a profile holder, verification of adulthood, or in the case of parents, implied permission for a child to use the site. But NewsCorp instead wanted to keep the popularity of the site and prevent its users from migrating to a competing free site.

And the cost of that competition was sexual assault and in many cases, death. Lawyers would call that negligence.

MySpace can keep spending money on press releases touting the latest ultra-lightweight verification software like Zephyr, but until they go to a for-pay service and proactively police their users for service violations, they cannot claim that they did all they could to prevent harm to children.