Accountability of MySpace for Sex Crimes Emanating From the Use of the Website, Essay Example

Sex offenders are increasingly using the internet to prey on young children and adolescents via popular social networking websites such as MySpace to lure their victims. With that said, this paper examines the views of two authors, Bob Sullivan and Kevin Alexander, on the question of accountability of MySpace in putting into place suitable mechanisms to prevent sex offenders from exploiting its networking site to target young victims.

Sullivan’s article, “MySpace and Sex Offenders: What’s the Problem” highlights the findings of a Wired News report that stated the existence of hundreds of registered sex offenders possessing MySpace profiles. The report pointed to an instance of a registered sex offender propositioning young boys using MySpace. Reports such as these forced MySpace to hire another company, Sentinel Tech Holding Corp to map registered sex offenders using their website and erasing their profiles. MySpace, publicly announced that it had removed 7000 profiles of potential registered sex offenders. This move was opposed by a group of state attorney generals who felt that MySpace’s action was tantamount to destruction of evidence. The author felt that MySpace had actually taken a tough stance against registered sex offenders. However, according to the attorney generals, the profiles removed could have helped determine parole violations by sex offenders which often include conditions of not using the internet. MySpace initially refused to share the information regarding the deleted profiles but later relented. Law makers felt that MySpace had acted too slowly as it took them over a year to put the Sentinel software into place. MySpace on their part countered by stating that since there was no national database of registered sex offenders, the sentinel software had to source the data from over 50 sources and that took time. The author believes that MySpace had initially moved slowly to quietly remove the sex offenders from their website to avoid bad publicity. The author concludes that merely mapping and removing registered sex offender’s profiles was not enough as the same people could register on MySpace using false aliases and that the company needed to put into place more foolproof measures for verification of under aged kids from joining the site. In summary the author is skeptical about MySpace’s ability to keep its site safe from sex offenders.

Furthermore, Kevin Alexander’s article “MySpace Not Responsible for Predators” highlights the case of a 14-year-old girl and her mother who filed for lawsuit against MySpace for allowing a 19-year old man to register false age and then use the site for striking up a friendship with the girl. The man enticed the girl through MySpace and later raped her. The author opines that such a lawsuit is frivolous as the mother of the girl defaulted in not providing greater oversight on what sort of internet usage was being done by the daughter. The author blames lax standards of parenting being the reason for the rise in sex crimes via the use of social networking sites. The author blames the girl too stating that at the age of 14, the girl was old enough to understand the dangers of giving away personal information and then agreeing to go out with an unknown stranger. Additionally, Alexander provides statistics that since there were over 80 million users of MySpace and only three such cases had emerged; these could be considered as aberrations as teenage behavioral patterns are unpredictable. He opines that though the lawsuit would probably be thrown out of the court as MySpace had built in a waiver from responsibility which every user has to sign, a successful lawsuit would herald dangers for internet freedoms. After all, services on the internet are all about making money and which internet company would wish to lose money in compensating lawsuits? They might as well restrict the services offered thereby resulting in restricting  internet freedoms.

Sullivan’s style in developing the argument for corporate accountability of MySpace is logical and factual. Sullivan’s approach looking at the legal arguments in support of greater corporate accountability by MySpace and the pragmatic steps taken by the company in trying to reduce the dangers of sexual predation via the use of their website is convincing. Sullivan uses a formal passive prose to make the case for greater corporate accountability.

On the other hand, Alexander’s prose, on the other hand is informal and emotive. The author tries to use dramatic statements to pin down the responsibility on poor parenting. The author’s contention  that a 14-year-old has sufficient maturity to understand the consequences of actions taken runs counter to the findings of  behavioral psychologists through neurobiological studies that the poor judgment performance of adolescents is attributable to incomplete frontal cortex and cerebellum development. Alexander’s prescription of intrusive parental oversight is hardly practicable as work pressures allow very little parenting time. Simply put, it is virtually impossible to have parents constantly monitoring every action of their children in this day and age.

All in all, it can be stated that Sullivan’s argument for greater accountability by MySpace to prevent use of its website by sex offenders is more convincing and practical than the argument by Alexander shifting the entire blame on poor parenting. Corporate responsibility for services offered on the internet cannot be wished away and in any case, putting into place objective concrete measures such as database monitoring to prevent sex offenders from using the website and better verification procedures to screen out under aged persons from accessing MySpace are more practical than subjective solutions such as better parenting.