The keyboard is mightier than the sword

Today The Register has this article on a woman suing MySpace because her daughter was sexually assaulted after using their services to talk to a man.

I hate cases like this where a free service is being charged due to the actions of one of its users. The girl in question is 14 years old, met a guy she talked to on the Internet and subsequently was sexually assulted. That’s not nice, but it’s not the fault of the Internet or the services that run on it. Communication systems cannot be held accountable for what is communicated.

Recently my parters daughter (aged 15) announced she was meeting Mike on her 16th birthday and they were getting a place together. Mike is nothing more than a series of messages typed into MSN Messenger, but to her he is very special. To me this is a worry. Who is Mike? How old is Mike? Where is Mike? The chances are I will never find out as the infactuation will probably pass on to the next MSN “boy of the month”. If she does actually meet him one day then so be it, that’s how life works and all girls meet boys and go on first dates. How on earth can MSN be blamed if it goes wrong? They simply provided a communication medium between two people in the same way as an email or even a sheet of paper and a pen could. To sue them for it would be utterly ridiculous. Next chat programs will be accused of spreading pornography or pirated music. The RIAA will be jumping up and down screaming that chat programs allow file transfers and must be banned.

3 comments

  1. i think the reason myspace gets so much flak is because they do very little to moderate, and even though the users signup and agree that they are 18 years of age, they clearly are:

    1) not 18, as many tell you this on their myspace page that they are “16” years old and go to “whatever” jr. high/high school.

    2) some post what I consider “semi-pornographic” pictures. Of course, not every myspace user does this, but there are enough to make it an issue.

    The lack of moderation and deletion of the

  2. I sort of agree with your points, but I’m not convinced that it’s MySpace who should shoulder the responsibility for moderating how juveniles (mis)use the service. In this instance they are a commercial operation, but this type of litigation could be brought against anyone who offers an unmoderated service.

    For example: I operate a Usenet News service that is free for anyone to use. I perform no moderation on it beyond dealing with flooding and specific abuse complaints. If a juvenile uses that service to post inappropriate material to some of Usenet’s shadier groups, should I be held accountable as the service host? Do I need to post age warnings and disclaimers and make people sign up to say they have read them?

    In the MySpace instance I agree that they should take action to moderate teens who are clearly breeching acceptable use policies. The danger in my mind is that if MySpace lose this case and have to pay compensation, others will begin to see the Internet as a souce for “no win, no fee” type litigation against all sorts of services.

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