An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
The lawsuit claims that News Corp. and its subsidiary MySpace were fully aware that sexual predators were contacting children on the site, but did nothing to stop it. The suit seeks damages for fraud and negligence in misrepresenting the MySpace's security measures to protect teens and children.
MySpace has since stated that it will tighten its security for minors. By next week, MySpace members over the age of 18 will have to know the email address or first and last name of any minors they wish to contact.
"We're going to build a foundation of safety and security so that social networking is a safe place and a well-lit community," Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer of News Corp. unit Fox Interactive Media said.
There is an easy solution to the problem. Don't let anyone under 18 join. If they do join, they will have to make their age 18 or more. Which means that it will be less likely for a "sexual predator" to contact them. Obviously, MySpace isn't going to do this because they may lose many members. MySpace is crap anyway - I've got one and it's abysmal.
I've got one, and I have an account, no profile, because it really is crap... Paradise for "sexual predators", similar to Bebo... Just search for under 18s! Well If they did make it over 18s only, not only would it keep them in an easier legal situation. What's the real point in MySpace if you now have to know the email address of the person you want to contact? Similar to Bebo (www.bebo.com), I think it defeats the object; MySpace allows people to meet, but I think the search will still be available to over 18's, therefore they should just make it an over 18 site, as under 18's will have no use for it; I mean come on, how easy is it to fake your age and in a few minutes be seeing hundreds of photograhs of drunk, half-naked 13 year old girls?
MySpace won't be changing much, because, yes, they'd lose some money, then again, any publicity is good publicity.
I don't actually see the point, from a personal perspective, of those places. You can't engage in debate, you cant IM, and you are relying on some profile who you can't judge (unlike on a forum). It's like having a forum with just a profile and PM system.
MySpace really is fascinating. It's an underage disco plied with neo-consumeristic independent 19 year olds whose nearest peer business case studies are early MTV and Ebay (MTV used to be rebellious + ebay was the world's biggest garage sale) MySpace also reminds me of when techno and electronic music was underground in the mid 1980's and the rock crowd said it would never go anywhere. Now it's the soundtrack for elevators, radios and so on. I like the honesty of Russell's post though : The first step is knowing what you don't know, and what makes friendster and myspace fundamentally different is cultural not technical. I didn't get myspace either outside of being an analyst and knowing it was huge for page views and the under 25yrs demo, but then I spent 3 days straight on it (for work actually) and got it. Step 1 Russell - Get a MySpace account and upload 'your' custom CSS template into About Me part of your profile. See if you can add some friends who dont work at Yahoo.
The funny part is they consider a predator a 19 year old trying to get with a 15 year old. Oooh... the girl went on her own free will to meet the 19 year old, but yet she's 1 year off of being sexually accountable so she gets classified as a child. This lawsuit is going to be a total mess.
What if it's a 16 year old trying to get in touch with a 15 year old? Is that still considered paedophilia? Because that sounds pretty damn ridiculous if that's the case...