Whose fault is it that 13-year-old “Julie Doe” lied about her age, met a guy on MySpace.com and was allegedly sexually assaulted by him in a Texas parking lot?
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the ruling by Judge Sam Sparks in the U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas, appears to be the first time a federal court has extended the same broad free-speech protection rights granted to Internet service providers to a social-networking site.
“If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe,” Sparks wrote of the unnamed alleged victim, “It was her parents, not MySpace.” Sparks’ ruling dismissed the case, adding that MySpace couldn’t be held liable for the actions of its users any more than Yahoo! was responsible for what people write on its message boards, and that the most popular social-networking site shouldn’t be punished for the failure of its voluntary safety measures. If you punish MySpace for that, he said, Internet firms would stop taking such steps to protect users.
“A lot of people are angry about what kids are doing and what’s happening on the Internet,” Parry Aftab, a leading Internet child-safety expert told the Times. “That’s fine. But it is not MySpace’s role to raise your child.”
The ruling stemmed from a case in which a 19-year-old man was charged with sexual assault last summer in connection with the Doe case. The girl’s parents sued MySpace parent company News Corp. for $30 million, saying the site didn’t do enough to protect its members.
Source: latimes
You May Also Be Interested In...
- DQ links for Feb 23, 2008
- China now has the most online users in the world
- European version of Windows 7 not to include Internet Explorer
- How to enable Internet Connection Sharing in Windows XP
- Precautions to keep your Laptop/Notebook computer safe
- Microsoft to discontinue Encarta
- Facebook to open the gates with ‘Facebook Connect’
- Google entangled in another copyright issue
Subscribe Now
If you enjoyed this post, you will definitely enjoy our others. Subscribe to the feed to get future posts delivered right to your mailbox or feedreader.
Powered by Thesis
An amazing WordPress Theme, nothing beats the versatility and SEO friendliness of the Thesis framework.
From beginners, to the most advanced WordPress developers, Thesis makes it easy for anyone to customize it.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }