1. It takes a lot of time to monitor your kids (I know because I do it)

2. Kids make multiple myspaces – and there is NO ACCOUNTABILITY because no real proof of ID is required. The CREDIT CARD soluation is very valid – kids would should have to supply a PARENTS email address & the parent would need to use it to respond with Credit card info. I WOULD BE HAPPY to pay a nominal fee so that my kids cannot access myspace w/o my knowledge. This would prevent item 3.

3. Todays kids are smart enough to create the myspace they don’t want parents to see elsewhere – and use pc’s other than the one at home to check them. They often have a “parent-approved” myspace too. It can be IMPOSSIBLE to find the one they don’t want you to see if it is never accessed from your home PC. (Try it – see how many kids have your kids’ name, like the same sports, etc).

4. Even after checking with every parent my kid visits, I still find that they get access outside my control, because other parents don’t always admit to not checking.

5. blame the parents – many of us do work very hard to instill values in our kids – and peer pressure & internet access interfere with those teachings every day. If you’ve never heard Bill Cosby talk about ‘brain damage’ in reference to kids & their memory about parental input, then you are not a parent and you don’t really get it.

6. yes, required for homework and now some schools don’t even issue BOOKS – kids have to use a webpage to learn the subject.

Can’t. Homework now comes over the internet. Teachers look at the kids funny when they ask for hard copies in class. Notifications of school events via email. Etc, etc.

Short of moving to Amish country, we dont got no choice.

BUT – its IMPOSSIBLE to monitor everything your kid does. 24/7. Thats absurd blame the parents BS. one cause of the logistics of it, and two, cause if you want to have a good relationship with your kid, you WONT be on top of everything they do.

Back in the old days, when there WAS store bought butter, but a helluva lot less electronics, there WAS the possibility of bad stuff happening when your kid went out. But at least you had some control over your home.

I dont have an answer re “my space”. But im getting tired of folks blaming parents constantly, and saying how easy it is too parent against the junk filled culture.

Hillary, at least, is sympathetic.

–TR

There should be a way to ensure a lawyer involved in a frivolous lawsuit wouldn’t get paid…

Do the mother and daughter think that you only become capable of sexual assault when you graduate from high school? A 14 year-old meeting an 18 year-old she doesn’t know is STILL stupid. He could have been exactly who he claimed to be and still assaulted her.

MySpace has “hired Hemanshu Nigam, director of consumer security outreach and child-safe computing at the Microsoft Corporation, to oversee safety, education and privacy programs and law enforcement affairs. Mr. Nigam has also served as a federal prosecutor of Internet child exploitation cases, an adviser to a Congressional commission on online child safety and an adviser to the White House on cyberstalking.” That was in April. To the people claiming MySpace “needs to do more” what more do you want?

And think about what you are asking… Verified ID? So, you want a company to force zero anonymity among it’s users – this is better how (for you, not for the guy staking you)? Might I also mention the freedom of speech issue here; anonymity is critial to the flow of free speech (McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission) – the goverment does not have the power to force MySpace to idenitfy it’s users, nor should it.

The internet is a phone line connected to your computer. If you don’t understand it, unplug it.

*Parent in SUV runs over (and kills) daughter and sues auto make because rear view cameras aren’t standard equipment

*Fat guy and fat teens sue McDonalds for making them fat

I could go on but you get the idea. The point that they’re making is “A bad thing happened to my daughter and IT’S NOT MY FAULT”. That’s generally why you file a lawsuit: you want someone to own up to their responsilibity in a monitary way. The problem here is that you’re saying that MySpace did something bad. But I fail to see how a free service that asks you the “standard” questions has somehow missed the mark. The key questions here are this

1. What more, in your eyes, does MySpace need to do besides ask “Are you a kidde predator?” What verification scheme would you use? Credit cards are a nice thought but why should their right to run a free site be impinged upon in such a manner? And what’s to stop tweenz from just starting their own blog on wordpress, blogger or any of the other free sites where they could just as easily be stalked?
2. Why is it that all the financial responsibility falls to MySpace? In fact, why do we not have a “loser pays” system where you might think twice about filing a lawsuit against a website who provided you a free webpage and assumed you’d be a responsible person and not, say, run off to meet person X whom you just met on the Internet?