End of Silence

I suppose it was bound to happen after the media hype earlier this year. Nevermind the voices of reason. If you’ve failed in your duty as a parent, then it must be someone else’s fault. A 14-year-old girl and her mother are suing MySpace because she was sexually assaulted by a guy she met on MySpace.

The girl is 14. The guy who assaulted her is 19. He contacted her through her profile and said he was a high school senior. After trading e-mails and phone calls, he picked her up at school, took her to a movie and out to eat and then sexually assaulted her. I’m guessing that the mother had no idea this was going on? If she did, why would she allow it? If she didn’t and the girl was stupid enough to meet a guy on the Internet regardless of what site or method she used without telling her parents the situation, then who’s fault is that? I guess they couldn’t sue the Internet.

I registered as a 14 year old on MySpace. From what I can tell, your profile is set to private when you register. It’s also appears that the “Send Message” and “Instant Message” options are disabled. I’m not sure if these features have been added since April when the assault took place. General searches on MySpace only go down to 16 years old, not lower. Of course, a search on google restricted to the myspace.com domain for “14 years old” will get you some hits. I didn’t try too hard to circumvent the restrictions I found in the first few minutes, but they appear to be making some effort. Their service would suffer if it required a drivers license or credit card. I don’t think it’s fair to put the burden on them just because you’re a shitty parent. $30 million, eh? That’ll be a nice paycheck for Mr. Loewy. This just screams money grubbing lawsuit.

And, yes, I’m a parent of two kids, a girl and a boy. I’m concerned with their safety, especially since one is starting to show interest in the Internet. What am I going to do? Restrict the hell out of him. Keep tabs on what he’s doing and ask him on a regular basis. Yes, this includes monitoring and logging where he’s going and what he’s doing. It also includes talking to him about smart behavior online, exactly what some of the guidelines on MySpace advise. The same goes for my daughter when she starts to venture out into cyberspace. Do I know that’s not what this mother did? No. If I’m doing that and my kid decides to do something stupid on a social networking site, will I blame the provider? No, but the mf’er who would take advantage had better watch out.

Perhaps Mr. Loewy would like to take on the NSA? Sounds like they’re up to something on MySpace. And watch out for those guys from Buda.

Some people’s commutes are about to get easier. News8Austin and others are reporting that the 45th street construction that started a little over a year ago is complete. The entire length of 45th from Mopac to Airport Blvd got some new sidewalks and water/wastewater lines. It was completed a month early and funded by a 1998 bond issuance, something to keep in mind when the bond elections come up this November. The Chronicle has details and opinions about what’ll be included in that package.

I also saw last week that the work on 183 between I-35 and Springdale/290 is nearly completed and expected to open by the end of the month, a welcome relief for me as the diversion onto the service road and the light at Cameron Road adds at least 10 minutes to my morning commute. The stretch of 183 between I-35 and Ben White is to become a toll road once more improvements are made. I’m unsure of the timeline on that, but now that I said toll road, this post is sure to get some comments. Toll road, toll road, toll road.