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Court: MySpace Not Responsible for Assaults on Victims

by Kaiser Hwang on July 3, 2009 at 08:07 AM

The Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles earlier this week ruled that "Internet servers" (read: Web sites) like MySpace cannot be found liable in cases where a minor is sexually assaulted by someone they met on the site. Tuesday's ruling comes from the case Julie Doe II et al v. MySpace Inc, in which several female victims of sexual assault and their families blamed MySpace for not properly verifying the girls' ages or defaulting their MySpace profile pages to "private." A particular section of the Communications Decency Act was found by the courts to free the popular social networking site of any wrongdoing.

With cases like the Craigslist killer and "MySpace Mom" Lori Drew capturing the public attention, this ruling comes at a crucial time for big social networking sites. Right now, there is no perfect balance of safety, freedom, and responsibility on the Web's most communal entities, but that's part of what makes them such useful tools. The decision of how to police and manage users should be left up to the Web site, and not decided in arbitration. [From: Reuters]

Tags: court, crime, myspace, ruling, top

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