Negligent parents blamed for MySpace assault
Pete Cashmore at Mashable has this article relating to a recent case where a parent tried to Sue MySpace for $30m for neglecting to protect their daughter online.
I quote here from Mashable:
Be thankful that when it comes to blaming the web for offline crimes, one judge has it figured out. The Texan parents who tried to sue MySpace for $30 million when their daughter was sexually assaulted by another MySpace user have had their case dismissed. What’s more, the judge said that the parents were negligent, not MySpace.
…and here…
As it turns out, the judge in the Texan case agrees. Judge Sam Sparks was fairly blunt with his comments, saying “If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace.” It’s also worth noting that the girl lied about her age, and that a lot of the correspondence seems to have happened via email and phone calls. The phone company, incidentally, isn’t being sued (maybe they didn’t have $30 million lying around). A child safety expert in the LAtimes was even more damning: “A lot of people are angry about what kids are doing and what’s happening on the Internet. That’s fine. But it is not MySpace’s role to raise your child.”
Mashable rightly notes that this may form a precedent in future cases where people try to sue online services for the actions of their users.
I say common sense at last, we all knew it had to swing back this way at some point.