This is a great and lengthy article about the viability of the MySpace lawsuit. It’s a great read but the last paragraph, in my opinion, sums up the whole situation…
At the end of the day, however, as long as users are willing to lie and circumvent, there is a limit to how effective controls can be. There are inherent perils involved in hooking up in cyberspace – and parents need to be the ones who educate their children about such dangers.
Hopefully, common sense will prevail.
TIME.com: A Countersuit in the MySpace Case?
A 14-year-old girl is suing the social networking site, where she met the man charged with sexually assaulting her. Now the man she says assaulted her may pursue his own legal case against MySpace.
It has been an unlikely legal wrangle from the start. First, a 14-year-old Austin, Texas, girl and her mother filed a $30 million lawsuit against MySpace.com, where the teenager claims she met a man who assaulted her. Now, the college student charged with the sexual assault also is considering suing the popular social networking site.
The defense attorney for Pete Solis, the 19-year-old Texas community college student charged with sexually assaulting the girl dubbed “Julie Doe” in her lawsuit, told TIME that if the Texas courts accept the premise that MySpace is liable because the two met there, then his client also has a claim, since the alleged victim falsely portrayed herself on the webiste as 15 years old.
“He’s been, in effect, just as much a victim if not more,” says Adam Reposa, the attorney for Solis, who is facing up to 20 years in prison on charges of second degree felony sexual assault. Since the lawsuit against MySpace also names Solis as a defendant, Reposa said he will “cross-file” and also sue MySpace and its owner, News Corporation. “MySpace wasn’t there when they went to Whataburger. MySpace wasn’t there when they went to the movie and MySpace wasn’t there when they climbed in the backseat,” Reposa said. “Meeting on MySpace if that alone is enough, then we can make the same claim for damages.”
This has officially gotten ridiculous.
Public reacts to MySpace.com lawsuit:
Local reaction, from Austin, Texas, about the MySpace lawsuit…
Reaction was mixed Tuesday after reports that MySpace.com is being sued for not doing enough to protect young users from predators.
Some say the girl’s parents should have known better.
Lowell Coleman likes to have coffee at the Spider House and frequently checks his MySpace.com account.
“It’s a friendly networking-type thing,” he said. “What’s great about it is you’re able to prescreen before meeting a person.”
But Coleman says he knows not everyone on MySpace.com is who they say they are.
“Then again, if you’re a sexual predator, it does give you the accessibility to go ahead and prey on a particular person.”
David Deschodt, who has an 11-year-old, wonders were the girls’ parents were.
“What was that kid doing on a website without any supervision?” he said.
Other parents KVUE News spoke to said children should always be supervised when using the Internet. Many weren’t blaming MySpace.com.
“I don’t know if MySpace.com can be accountable. I really think it’s up to the parents to monitor.” said Lacey Cominsky who has an 11-year-old. “There needs to be more personal responsibility. I think I know there’s punitive damages that encourage a corporation that makes a lot of money to change their policy. It’s not about the plaintiffs just getting that money.”
Your thoughts?
Teenager and her mother sue MySpace.com for $30 million:
A 14-year-old Travis County girl who said she was sexually assaulted by a Buda man she met on MySpace.com sued the popular Internet social networking site Monday for $30 million, claiming it fails to protect minors from adult sexual predators.
The lawsuit claims the Web site does not require users to verify their age and calls the security measures aimed at preventing strangers from contacting users younger than 16 “utterly ineffective.”
“MySpace is more concerned about making money than protecting children online,” said Adam Loewy, who is representing the girl and her mother in the lawsuit against MySpace, its parent company News Corp. and Pete Solis, the 19-year-old accused by police of sexually assaulting the girl.
Solis contacted the girl through her MySpace Web site in April, telling her that he was a high school senior who played on the football team, according to the lawsuit. She told him she was a freshman in high school and gave him her cell phone number, the lawsuit said.
In May, he picked her up at school, took her out to eat and to a movie and then drove her to an apartment complex parking lot in South Austin where he sexually assaulted her, police have said. He was arrested May 19.
A month before Solis initially contacted the girl on MySpace.com, representatives of the Internet site told CBS News that they protected users younger than 16 from being contacted by people who didn’t know them, according to the lawsuit.
“That is obviously false,” Loewy said. “There are ways to contact them.”
The lawsuit includes news reports of other sexual assaults in which victims were contacted through MySpace. They include a 22-year-old Wisconsin man charged with six counts of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a 27-year-old Connecticut man accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.
Why do I get the feeling that this attorney is going to be the Jack Thompson of MySpace?
Appeal of Columbine settlement rejected:
Seems like we have some news tonight after all. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Michael and Vonda Shoels, parents of Isaiah Shoels who was killed at Columbine, cannot back out of a settlement with the parents of our favorite rotting in hell killer scumbags Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
The Shoelses say that the family accepted the settlement because of a mistake made at their lawyer’s office. Which may be entirely true.
However, what gets me is that between the 13 families and others, the settlement is only $1.6 million. I know you could never put a price on losing a family member, but $1.6M between dozens of people seems like an insult to me.
Another term of the settlement was that the families would drop lawsuits against the Harrises and Klebolds for letting their mutant offspring stockpile weapons. It sounds like the families may not have been well represented. And speaking of shady lawyering check out this quote from the Klebolds’ lawyer…
“We hope this means the end of Columbine lawsuits and that the healing in the community continues,” said Frank Patterson, attorney for the Klebolds.
Translation: Please stop suing my clients because if they don’t have any money I don’t get paid. Spare me. As we’ve all heard, the Klebolds don’t think they did anything wrong and offer no apologies. They don’t want the community to heal. They just want the community off their backs because they feel like they’ve done nothing wrong. I guess you can see where their kid got his fucked up priorities.
I said it and someone must have been listening. Let me quote the article…
The family of a slain motorist has filed suit against the maker of a video game that two teens claim inspired them to shoot at passing cars on a Tennessee highway.
So the family of the victim is suing the makers of GTA because of two assclown kids who went on a shooting spree after playing it. If these kids had watched a movie, would they be suing the movie company? If anybody should be sued, it should be the dumbass parents.
According to the article, a September 2000 Federal Trade Commission report says that parents are present at and involved in the purchase or rental of games 83 percent of the time. And where did these kids get the gun? Michael Moore probably thinks that they got it at their local Circle K.
These kids obviously had something wrong with them, to begin with, and the video game is not the root of the problem.
Families of Columbine victims settle with gunmen’s parents:
The terms of the settlement were undisclosed but listen to this quote…
The families’ attorney, Barry Arrington, argued that the Klebolds and Harrises were liable for not being aware of or not doing anything about the gunplay and bombmaking activities of their sons.
How anyone can disagree with that statement is beyond me. As far as I’m concerned, they should be charged with 13 counts of manslaughter, but unfortunately, life isn’t like Law and Order.
I read this article today about some of the families of the Columbine shooting victims are suing video game manufacturers. They are singling out the popular game “Doom” specifically. As usual, I will preface this by saying again my heart goes out to the victims’ families. Not a day goes by where I don’t pray for them. But I think their latest efforts are misguided. Suing the video game manufacturers for the billions they’re asking for just seems a little too much to me.
The video games are not to blame. To me, the blame lies squarely on the parents of Harris and Klebold. For those of you who may not know in Doom, you are a “space marine” and you go around shooting aliens with big guns and the aliens bleed red blood.
It is a pretty violent game. I’ve played it a few times myself. This is not a game for kids or teens. When I first played it, the game was clearly rated “M” for mature. Meaning, only 17+ should play the game. If I caught my son playing this game, he’d be grounded until his wedding day. The game did not make these kids killers. Egomania and inattentive parents did. If they should sue anybody it should be the parents, which they already did and won, or the retailers who sold them this game, or whoever bought it for them.
I hate to say this but suing the video game manufacturers looks like some ambulance chasing lawyer whispered into their ears. It looks very opportunistic.