CreepSpace: Who is really to blame?
Being on the edge of the generation gap between those who have grown up with computers as part of their everyday lives and those who still regard them as an unnecessary evil, I get an interesting perspective from people regarding sites like Facebook and MySpace. The typical response is that the sites are creepy and give people the opportunity to be stalked or preyed upon. I’m not naive; if I suggested that it wasn’t possible, I’d be lying or a fool. There have been cases of a police officer in Langley luring a youth into meeting up via the site Nexopia. These are not unique or new occurences, and as far back as 2001, Ottawa was attempting to address the issue.
Despite what I would consider to be the obvious, there seems to be some suprise that MySpace has up to 30,000 known sex offenders on the site. These sites are difficult to monitor, but I can’t really blame MySpace, at least not entirely. There should be some ability for users to prevent being stalked, but who is in charge of monitoring the activities of these known offenders? If they have Internet access, is it not fairly simple to monitor the way they use it? I support certain rights and freedoms, but a convicted sex offender has forfeited many of the rights that the average individual enjoys, and they should be restricted accordingly.
Unlike the Tyee article that I linked to above, I don’t blame the medium, the Internet, nor do I blame MySpace. The ‘Net and the sites have some responsibility, as do the users of the sites, to ensure that the activities do not increase the potential for something bad to happen. But much like the parent that blames Television and video games for violent youth, those upholding the law, whether in a law enformcement agency or elected or appointed member of government, need to take a great deal of responsibility for monitoring the activities of those that are potential offenders. What seems more realistic - for the agencies responsible for maintaining our safety to keep tabs on those who are known to be of risk, or for the site to prevent 30k users (a number that represents just 0.03% of the total MySpace users) from creating profiles?