Virginia Attorney General Proposes MySpace Bill:

Another State Attorney General who doesn’t get it jumps on the MySpace scarewagon. This time from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced plans today for legislation to require convicted sex offenders to register their online identities with the state.

That would allow social networking Web sites like MySpace to delete or block access. McDonnell’s says in a statement that Virginia would be the first state to propose registration of e-mail addresses and instant messaging identities on the state’s sex offender registry.

McDonnell says it’s important these changes be made at a state level because most prosecutions of sex offenders happen at the state level. There are more than 550-thousand registered sex offenders in the United States and 13-thousand in Virginia.

MySpace officials applauded the Virginia announcement, saying the Internet “is a community as real as any other neighborhood and is in need of similar safeguards.”

In my opinion, this proposed legislation is just to garner votes from the equally clueless soccer mom types.

Again I say what’s to stop the sex offenders from creating another account different from one registered with the state. And how will this prevent those predators who haven’t been caught from claiming another victim?

When you have those questions answered then you’ll have some legislation with teeth instead of the same old crap that legislators have been trotting out.

Politicians and lawmakers should learn how to use the internet first before they start legislating it.

And again not one mention of more vigilant parenting.

4 responses to “Va. Attorney General piles on MySpace”

  1. Trench,

    I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree. Everytime I hear this crap from lawmakers, about registering email addresses, etc., I am completely dumbfounded that they think it is just that simple. As you said, it doesn’t even begin to reach the sex offenders who haven’t been caught, prosecuted, etc.

    In all of the negative media coverage regarding Myspace, the one thing the media fails to mention, is that there are safegaurds young people can take on there own, such as designating their profile as “private”. Of course, because we do communicate, my daughter made a Myspace page for me, so I could keep up with her and her friends.

    I think a lot of parents nowadays treat the computer like they did the tv/vcr/dvd players using it as a babysitter. They need to get their head out of their a** and pay attention to what their kids are doing.

    I am a single parent of a 16 year old daughter. She does have a Myspace account, which she actively uses. Fortunately, I have taught my daughter right from wrong, and she knows better than to converse with people she does not know. Before I knew anythign about Mysapce, all I had heard was the negative media attention. NOwhere did the media tell me that these kids had the capability to block people from viewing their profile. Fortunately, we have a little thing called communication in our house.

  2. If they lock sex offender up for a longer time they wouldnt be out on the streets and on the web preying on kids.

    And Trench, you might be letting Myspace off the hook here too. Parenting is one thing, but when the technology exists to monitor comments and to profile behavior on a website, yet the website refuses to employ the technology, for fears of “privacy” then the site I believe is liable for any harm to its users.

    Lots of first time sex offenders commit their first crimes using myspace. No email registry is going to stop that. Only a vigilant myspace staff, using technology to profile predatory behavior can do that.

  3. I know. The whole “privacy” issue is another I could rant on for days.

  4. whats up man dis your girl from ft myers baby i just love how you do your thing and that you keeping up the good work.

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