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Four families suing MySpace over assaults
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The Associated Press
NEW YORK - Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.
The law firms, Barry & Loewy LLP of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin LLP of Houston, said families from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina filed separate suits Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by the companies.
“In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users,” said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer.
The families are seeking monetary damages "in the millions of dollars," Itkin said.
"Hopefully these lawsuits can spur MySpace into action and prevent this from happening to another child somewhere," he said.
Critics including parents, school officials and police have been increasingly warning of online predators at sites like MySpace, where youth-oriented visitors are encouraged to expand their circles of friends using free messaging tools and personal profile pages.
MySpace has responded with added educational efforts and partnerships with law enforcement. The company has also placed restrictions on how adults may contact younger users on MySpace, while developing technologies such as one announced Wednesday to let parents see some aspects of their child’s online profile, including the stated age. That tool is expected this summer.
"MySpace serves as an industry leader on Internet safety and we take proactive measures to protect our members," Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, said in a statement. "We provide users with a range of tools to enable a safer online experience."
But he said Internet safety is a shared responsibility, requiring users to "apply common sense offline safety lessons in their online experiences and engage in open family dialogue."
The lawyers who filed the latest lawsuits said the plaintiffs include a 15-year-old girl from Texas who was lured to a meeting, drugged and assaulted in 2006 by an adult MySpace user, who is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Texas after pleading guilty to sexual assault.
The others are a 15-year-old girl from Pennsylvania, a 14-year-old from New York and two South Carolina sisters, ages 14 and 15.
Last June, the mother of a 14-year-old who says she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old user sued MySpace and News Corp., seeking $30 million in damages. That lawsuit, filed in a Texas state court, claims the 19-year-old lied about being a senior in high school to gain her trust and phone number.
"News Corp. shares hit a new 52-week high of $24.07 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange before slipping back to $23.99, up 29 cents.
MySpace Slapped with Sex Suits By Red Herring Staff The families of four under-aged girls have filed lawsuits against News Corp. and its MySpace.com social-networking site, claiming their daughters were sexually assaulted by adults they first met on the site. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who are pursuing claims of assault in The families are reportedly seeking damages in the millions of dollars. In each case, an adult MySpace.com member contacted the minor girl, obtained her personal information, and later sexually assaulted her, claimed Barry & Loewy, the The lawsuits were the latest blow for MySpace, which has come under increasing pressure to take action to protect underage members from predatory sex offenders. A group of 33 state attorneys general are understood to be considering action against MySpace if it does not raise the age limit to join the site to 16 from 14 and begin verifying members' ages. MySpace.com this week tried to deflect criticism by announcing it would start to offer free parental notification software in a bid to appease critics who worry that the site makes it easy for children to provide too much personal information, making them easy prey for sex offenders. Parents will be able to use the software, named "Zephyr," to find out what name, age and location their children use to represent themselves on MySpace, but it won’t allow parents to read their children's e-mail or see their profile pages. The company last year was sued in
Under-aged girls allege social-networking site members sexually assaulted them.
January 18, 2007
Is MySpace's 15 Minutes Over?
Stephen Ellis
November 21, 2006
News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace is without a doubt one of the most popular websites on the Internet. With giants like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) lining up to pay hundreds of millions to be the search engine of choice for the site, it is clear that Mr. Murdoch and Co. got quite the deal when they acquired the site (or did he steal it?) for $580 million last July. Not surprisingly, Mr. Murdoch mentioned at an investor meeting last week that the site now could be sold for $6 billion, and he expects 200 million users by mid-2007.
Murdoch's price-dropping of a potential valuation for MySpace is intriguing, because it implies that News Corp. might be willing to unload the site if the price is right. Given the headaches involved with, say, trying to sell copyrighted music and crack down on its user base, who quite often use illegal means to obtain songs to play on their MySpace pages, it might be a smart move. Heck, the site even gave away a band's MySpace page to a Fox TV show, before an outcry made the company give it back to the band. After all, the younger user base is largely fickle, with sites like Friendster.com and Xanga.com left in its wake.
Advertisers can be fickle as well, and with Facebook.com looking for a billion-dollar-plus valuation, an acquirer needs to have a compelling value proposition for advertisers to justify those types of numbers. Facebook and MySpace, for all their gaudy traffic numbers, are having a difficult time developing a strong advertising base, due in part to fear of user backlash, and in part to the lack of tools to pull data advertisers want from the collective user profiles. Indeed, with some teens moving over to Facebook due to privacy concerns, perhaps Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), in signing the site to a search deal, didn't do too badly in what many saw as a desperate reaction to Google locking up MySpace.
Still, perhaps with a more web-savvy partner like Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) or Barry Diller's Interactive (Nasdaq: IACI), MySpace may be able to reap better synergies across the many Internet properties both own. Those companies will be free of the difficulties that come with potentially devaluing their own valuable TV content for Web shorts, and will be able to view the content landscape from an independent viewpoint. Perhaps it is no surprise that News Corp.'s Internet division president, Ross Levinsohn, who convinced the company to buy MySpace, resigned last week. Investors expecting great things from MySpace for News Corp. might want to reconsider -- MySpace's 15 minutes of fame might be drawing to a close.
