A teenage girl and her mother have filed suit against MySpace.com after the 14-year-old was sexually assaulted by a man who lied about his age on his profile. The outcome of the suit could have large implications for how much liability website operators face for events occurring offline.
Adam Loewy, the attorney for the girl, alleges that MySpace does not do enough to very ages of members or to prevent strangers from contacting underage users. The suit points out that MySpace requires only a name, an email address, sex, country, and date of birth-none of which “has to be true.”
“MySpace is more concerned about making money than protecting children online,” Loewy told Texas-based American-Statesman. The suit seeks $30 million, or approximately one percent of the company’s value.
Nineteen-year-old Pete Solis was arrested in May and charged with sexual assault. Solis told the young lady he was a senior in high school and played football. She agreed to meet him at her apartment complex where he picked her up before driving to a parking lot and assaulting her.
The suit raises serious questions, and a classic debate, about the role parents play in protecting their children and monitoring their online activities. MySpace’s parent company, News Corp., recently launched an aggressive media campaign across its broadcasting channels aimed at heightening the awareness of sexual predation. The public service announcement banner ads appearing on the site read:
“1 in 5 kids online is sexually solicited. Online predators know what they’re doing. Do you?”
In April, News Corp. appointed former Microsoft employee Hemanshu Nigam as “safety czar” to oversee protective measures on MySpace.com. In a statement, Nigam said, ” We take aggressive measures to protect our members. We encourage everyone on the Internet to engage in smart web practices and have open family dialogue about how to apply offline lessons in the online world.”
But also in April, spokeswoman Dani Dudeck told Murdok that MySpace, in addition to internal tipsters, relies heavily on algorithms to detect violations of terms of use.
“[The algorithms] are functioning on the site only to uphold the terms of use. We don’t censor. We don’t scan blogs. We don’t judge our users’ content,” she said.
Those algorithms, according to Dudeck, pick up on semantic cues and slips of the typist to determine if someone is lying about their age. For example, if someone claims to be 14, the age required to post a profile on the site, the algorithms notice if they say something about their 12th birthday party the day before. But that’s mainly to make sure a blogger is old enough to use the site, and it’s reasonable to say that older users are better at keeping up appearances.
The age verification procedure is a large component of the complaint. Though News Corp. has devoted significant resources to raising awareness of sexual predation, MySpace is still relatively easy for sexual predators to game.
The National Crime Prevention Center recently issued advice for parents and teens with online profiles. Until the courts decide who’s responsible for these assaults, it’ll be solely up to parents to monitor their children online.
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