MA Attorney General Seeks Myspace Changes

kaufmanmoore writes "Massachusetts' Attorney General Tom Reilly is saying that Myspace is not doing enough to protect children from sexual predators and is calling for action. The biggest proposal is to change the minimum age from 14 to 18 with an age verification system, but also to respond to all reports of inappropriate content within 24 hours and significantly raise the number of staff who review images and content." From the article: "The arrest Tuesday of a 27-year-old man in Connecticut on charges of illegal sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl he met through MySpace underlines the risks of the fast-growing Internet site that boasts about 60 million members."

what about false ages?

[zboy]

That isn't going to stop girls from getting accounts. The way myspace is right now, nobody (excpet the people you add to your friends list) can see your profile unless you are over the age of 15. So what to the under 15 year olds do? they say they're 18, or 20, or whatever so that everyone can see their profile. (on the other side, my 23 year old friend said she was 15 just so that her profile woudl be private..)

Re:Whatever

[DragonWriter]

They probably mean some kind of more serious age verification, likely relying on a credit card or something similar.

Re:Raise your own kids!

[daviddennis]

I'm curious about something from the perspective of a parent that has always puzzled me.

if your kid has 15 year old male friends, they probably want to sleep with her.

If your kid has 17 year old male friends, they probably want to sleep with her.

If your kid has 50 year old male friends, they probably want to sleep with her.

What makes the behavior of the 50 year old worse, or even different, from the behavior of the younger friends?

D

Re:Raise your own kids!

[sofla]

How did this get rated "insightful"? It is the most obvious counter-argument to make, a trained monkey could do it. And its a Red Herring.

Its easy to blame the people blaming MySpace, because its hard to think about a real solution to the problem. Hint: like most things in life, its somewhere in the middle.

You could use this same silly counter-argument to get bar owners to stop checking ID. After all, any "responsible" parent would "always" know what their children are up to, wouldn't they? This isn't about putting the blame on the drug (alcohol, myspace) instead of the user. Some parents, including myself, feel that it is important to give children an opportunity to grow up and make their own decisions, rather than controlling every single aspect of their lives. Guess what? This means that at some point I won't know everything they are doing, I will just have to hope that I taught them well and trust them to make good decisions on their own. Sure they'll make mistakes. This isn't about asking society to raise my kids, its about asking for reasonable precautions to help protect children against criminals.

You'd think MySpace would have learned something from the problems AOL faced a few years back. Or maybe find a lawyer that could spell COPPA.

Re:This arrest shows that people are paying attent

[voice_of_all_reason]

The idea that under 18s should be banned from public parks would immediately be seen for the stupid overprotective reactionism that it is.

Um, really? What shining ray of hope do you live in that still thinks so? My local park closes at 8pm year-round. Kids (who else uses a park?) can and have been charged with tresspassing. Granted, it's usually in addition to other charges involving drugs, alcohol, or vandalism.

Sexual Predators

[Anonymous Coward]

Sexual predators abound at myRedbook [myredbook.com]. Changing just mySpace will not fix the issues of sexual predators on the Internet. You need to enact and enforce comprehensive laws.

myRedbook [myredbook.com] is not a joke site. What you are seeing is both real and quite sick.

Women sell themselves (often at the "encouragement" of their pimps) at myRedbook. If you think that myRedbook verifies their ages, then you must believe that Elvis is still alive.

Re:Raise your own kids!

[NtroP]

does your daughter blog about your sex life on MySpace?

I'm married with 2 teenage kids. What sex life?

Third, should it come up, let her know that most rational males still consider her a virgin. You have to actually participate in something to unset that bit, and it sounds like she was probably an unwitting bystander to the act.

This was a tough one. As you said, her physical virginity is different from her emotional one. In the process of recovering from this ordeal we tried very hard to get her to see where her responsibility lie and where it ended. She was responsible for a string of bad decisions which lead up to the rape, but she was not responsible for the rape. She chose to go to a party with older, college-age kids (and other high schoolers), where she knew there would be drinking, against our wishes - her responsibility. She chose to accept an alcoholic drink from a stranger even though she was underage - her responsibility. She went unconscious, was stripped in front of a crowd of guys and raped - NOT her responsibility.

She doesn't consider this her first sexual experience because she remembers very little of it (she woke up right at the end). She's much more careful now and realizes that there can be serious repercussions for her actions and decisions. It's not the way I would have had her learn that. We've done our best to minimize the emotional trauma on her (which is why we never tried to drag this through the court system). We are confident that she'll be able to lead a healthy, happy, sexual life with someone who loves her.