Myspace and parental responsibilty
January 21st 2007 11:35
I was flicking through the Sunday Herald today and an interesting story caught my eye. There are some parents in the United States (where else?) who are planning on suing the owners of Myspace and its owner, Newscorp for millions because they say that there was apparent negligence, fraud and misrepresentation. It stems from incidents where their teenage daughters (aged 14 and 15) were lured away and assaulted.
It is a very unfortunate situation for all concerned because I'm sure whilst all concerned want to keep all young people safe someone has let these girls down somewhere. The tragedy of the situation is that in the end no one will be willing to stand up and take the responsibility of admitting they were wrong. We live in a world of refusing to take responsibility for own, or someone under our care, actions. There was a story some years ago where a woman spilt coffee and burnt herself with it. She took action in the best way Americans knew how. She sued and she won big time. It's the reason why fast food chains now carry warnings on their cups saying that contents are extremely hot. With a little common sense it goes without saying that coffee is hot and it spilling on yourself or someone else will burn. However, this seems not to be the case as no matter what mistakes people make they now have a course of redress that says that even though it may be their fault they can still sue the pants off someone or a company on the premise of them not doing the job that the plaintiff were suppose to do in the first place.
In this case, the parents are choosing to sue a website and it's parent company for not protecting their daughters. Over the past few years, there has been plenty of discussion over the very same thing that happened in this case. Any parent that doesn't know about what dangers lurk on the internet must not have been living above ground whilst all the talk was going on. Surely the girls involved must have been educated or at least heard about what can happen?
What about the parents role in this? There is a saying in law when you come to the table you must come with clean hands. It's hard to see parental clean hands when they are the ones who are supposed to be protectors of their own young but yet pass the buck. If the company was created as a babysitter to look after kids then the case may have a different complexion to it. However, the girls were of the impression that this was a decision they could make without parental consent. If that was the case where were the parents and why weren't they keeping a closer eye on what their children were up to (not just when they were on the computer but who they were going off to meet) or if there was consent, the parents then should take responsibility for what happened under their watch.
This case speaks volumes and will show in the end where society stands about peoples attitude toward responsibility toward parenting and protection of the young.
It is a very unfortunate situation for all concerned because I'm sure whilst all concerned want to keep all young people safe someone has let these girls down somewhere. The tragedy of the situation is that in the end no one will be willing to stand up and take the responsibility of admitting they were wrong. We live in a world of refusing to take responsibility for own, or someone under our care, actions. There was a story some years ago where a woman spilt coffee and burnt herself with it. She took action in the best way Americans knew how. She sued and she won big time. It's the reason why fast food chains now carry warnings on their cups saying that contents are extremely hot. With a little common sense it goes without saying that coffee is hot and it spilling on yourself or someone else will burn. However, this seems not to be the case as no matter what mistakes people make they now have a course of redress that says that even though it may be their fault they can still sue the pants off someone or a company on the premise of them not doing the job that the plaintiff were suppose to do in the first place.
In this case, the parents are choosing to sue a website and it's parent company for not protecting their daughters. Over the past few years, there has been plenty of discussion over the very same thing that happened in this case. Any parent that doesn't know about what dangers lurk on the internet must not have been living above ground whilst all the talk was going on. Surely the girls involved must have been educated or at least heard about what can happen?
What about the parents role in this? There is a saying in law when you come to the table you must come with clean hands. It's hard to see parental clean hands when they are the ones who are supposed to be protectors of their own young but yet pass the buck. If the company was created as a babysitter to look after kids then the case may have a different complexion to it. However, the girls were of the impression that this was a decision they could make without parental consent. If that was the case where were the parents and why weren't they keeping a closer eye on what their children were up to (not just when they were on the computer but who they were going off to meet) or if there was consent, the parents then should take responsibility for what happened under their watch.
This case speaks volumes and will show in the end where society stands about peoples attitude toward responsibility toward parenting and protection of the young.
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