TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

NC Attorney General brings the MySpace hate

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Trench Reynolds

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Attorney General Pushes For Internet Safeguards:

I thought that my state of residence would have a little more sense, but that’s what I get for thinking. Add North Carolina to the list of states who are jumping on the blame MySpace Boogeyman bandwagon. Attorney General Roy Cooper has called on sites like MySpace to install age verification or parental notification systems.

“They lure children onto the site with ads, lull parents into thinking its safe when in reality these children are a mouse click away from porn and predators,” Cooper said.

That may just be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard come out of a politician’s mouth since “It depends on your definition of ‘is’.”

He makes it sound like MySpace goes around in a virtual van from computer to computer, offering kids candy. And how do they lull parents into thinking it’s safe? Maybe they lulled you, Mr. Cooper, but not me. Parents shouldn’t be letting their kids have unfettered access to the internet anyway.

Cooper admits it’s not a perfect system.

“We know ways kids can get around system, but you can protect most of the kids,” Cooper said.

You know how you can protect all the kids, Mr. Cooper? By having responsible parents. As usual, I don’t hear you suggesting any laws for that.

Comments

5 responses to “NC Attorney General brings the MySpace hate”

  1. BW Avatar
    BW

    Forgive me for making snap judgments, but here’s a guy whose exposure to the internet is probably limited to cnn and email pretending that he knows the first thing about what can be installed to ‘protect the children.’ He’s sure they can protect ‘most’ kids, yet most likely couldn’t explain the difference between http and https.

    Reply
  2. Trench Reynolds Avatar
    Trench Reynolds

    One’s plural and one’s singular. 😛 Just kidding.

    Reply
  3. Mike Ohlhausen Avatar
    Mike Ohlhausen

    Interesting, how easy it is for web publishers to blame it all on the parents. Then they would also call us the gustapo if we followed them to school, work, bug their phone, and raid their school locker in surprise inspections. As a parent I tried to check on my childs possible use of Myspace, as well as Facebook. Interesting, they would not release ANY info, even if it were simply a link to my childs content. They are protecting the children as well as any content which may be inappropriate for them to be displaying. I cannot control the school computer security, or the library, and all the kids know how to bypass the security with instant proxies. So, how can the parent be expected to track what they are doing? Web sites such as myspace and facebook cater to the young users and actually market to them. They know what the results are, cash in their pockets from advertisers tripping over the opportunity to milk the teens for their cash. I don’t feel too badly for stores selling cigarettes, and beer to kids and I don’t feel to badly for myspace for providing a perfect space for child porn, and teen angst, and someone like Patrick Naughton (the Disney Exec / Java creator / child porn freak) that can take them away from it all.

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  4. Trench Reynolds Avatar
    Trench Reynolds

    You know you can search MySpace using their name or their school right?

    Reply
  5. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    All of you get over yourself. If you want to protect your kids from everything your going to have to go back to the stone age. There is no suresafe way to protect anyone from anyone else. For example who was protecting us from Ray Cooper? Looks like that one failed to

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