so this is discrimination eh? there is no reason that all former sex offenders cant use myspace. i mean not all of them will do it again. parents should be keeping little slutty niave betty off myspace, not myspace keeping customers off themselves.

i almost had sex with my girlfriend b4 her 18th birthday, but luckly i didnt.. it was like 11:59pm and 59 seconds b4 she started undressing by the time she was fully nude.. she was 18! LOL just kidding, but still somethings are kinda unfair, but the obvious stuff should def not be taken lightly

Most of you guys are ignoramous'. You shouldn't talk about sh*t you don't know one ioda about.

I've not even read the thread yet, but ff you're going to call people ignoramouses, or even ignorami, best check your grammar first, otherwise you look a bit silly!

Sex offenders and child predators should be hung up by their genitals.

Freakin' idiots.

Yea, I'd like to know how they can prevent them from making up a name and having a MySpace page anyway. Actually, thats a good question. Why would a registered sex offender open an account on MySpace with their actual name and (I would assume if they are being deleted) attempt more offensive behavior?

I will say this though, that if the registered sex offender is not using his page to solicit activities then it is certainly not appropriate to delete their profiles. Maybe they have family they want to communicate with or something. You can't punish their first amendment rights if they are not commiting or attempting to commit a crime.

Why not? It does not prohibit their first amendment right, it only hinders it in effect causing them to find somewhere else to express it.

In fact, its much like the services action. "Vendor may deny service to anyone for any reason."

If I have a "club" lets say. In order to register for this "club" you are not allowed to speak or write or express anything. If you express anything, talk or write, you may be removed from this club. It is not denying you your first ammendment right to speech in that you are violating the terms of the agreement to be a member of said "club".

Registered offenders are ordered to not linger, visit, contact or otherwise, areas where they can pray on individules and even encouraged to keep away from websites that make thing THINK about these kinda of individules. Social networks is one of those places they can pray, which is why MySpace signed a deal with Sentenel to keep this from happening. Not to mention the Bills being proposed and/or passed forcing sex offenders to provide email addresses as a form of identification online. Those found using unregistered email addresses would be a violation of their parol and get sent back home... Or, sorry, prison. ;]

You need to get your facts straight. Those conditions you state may or may not be imposed during the term of "parol.(sic), just as parole conditions for any crime. They are imposed with limits and boundaries, even at that time and are specifically spelled out.

Once an offender of any crime has completed parole, those parole conditions no longer are applicable. There are many registered sex offenders, drug offenders, burglars and a bit of everything else, who have completed their sentences in entirety and are no longer bound by parole conditions. For the most part, they are free to build and continue a productive life, the same as anyone else. Including their right to vote. About the only permanent restriction is possession of firearms.

Some of these registered sex offenders were convicted 20 years ago or longer....and many "sex offenses" did not involve minors and adults. An offense requiring registration in many states can be for something as stupid as being drunk and taking a leak in public. Or, even an 18 year old having sexual contact with a 17 year old girlfriend or boyfriend.

Do we prevent people convicted of murder from joining a gun forum? Or block a drug offender from looking up information on prescription drugs? Or perhaps block an embezzler from online banking services?

If a registered sex offender, or a sex offender who just hasn't been caught yet and is still in the "good citizen" category attempts inappropriate behavior on any social networking site, certainly they should be barred and prosecuted.

It is also good to remember that less than 10% of convicted sex offenders re-offend per federal statistics....and even then, it depends on the nature of the offense (i.e. family member, stranger, etc.)

If prevention is your goal, we should be more concerned about immediate behavior, since following the news, we are shocked nearly on a weekly basis when some preacher, police officer, politician, teacher or other person in authority or working with children is caught.

If they were not set to conditions under the same parole, they would not be REQUIERED to REGISTER as an offender! What makes the difference between leading a normal life and registering every year as an offender and each time they move to a new location... Oh, thats right, they reregister as a sex offender. Does a ex-burglar reregister as a burglar each time he moves while off parole?? Nope. As burglars bounds are lifted and he walks free, a sex offender is still bound by limitations.

Limitations such as living within 2000 feet of a school house, park, and many locations the children frequent. Many states have that in effect.. How about that for a limitation? Many of these limitations apply to those offenders who have offense against children under 14, but an offender non-the-less. Does a burglar have the same limitations to his neighbors? Is a burglar banned from living within 2000 feet of another home he could potentially burglarize?? No, not even while on parole.

So don't give me that garbage about an offender being a free, maybe honorable, maybe even a little bit of building their lives and getting it together.. Because they still have crappy limitations.. But guess what, it, in some form of way, gives a LITTLE more protection against them in whatever capacity they offended.

I don't care if they got caught pissin in their toilet in their own house, if the door is open and someone walks by, they made a mistake that shouldn't have happened. I guess (and some of you drinkers might find this interesting) drinking and pissin should be against the law too!... DWP Drinkin While Pissin. ;] How about a call for another prohibition. Get rid of alcohol. This act might solve a few more problems. It certainly will clean up that DWP issue.

Social Networks give sex predators a plethora of information and people at their fingertips to exploit. Why GIVE them tools to pray with, or feel an urge to continue in their ways knowing that its “right there.”

You are correct. Many state do have limitations on the residence of registered sex offenders and they have to register annually or within some other time frame. Some states have gone way too far with the residence limits and are being challenged in the courts, as the entire city ends up being off limits and the courts indicate that is unreasonable.

Likewise, new federal legislation requires that ALL registered sex offenders be give levels, one through three, based on the age of the offense and many other factors, as determined by the federal statute. Even the feds realize that you cannot lump everyone into the same category of dangerousness. Someone with a single conviction, twenty or thirty years ago within the family does not carry the same level of dangerousness as someone who offended against a stranger and was released three months ago.

And, as you point out, each state sets restrictions on registered offenders and as with all law, those restrictions must be spelled out by statute.

Would you care to show me a link to the statute, for any state, which prohibits a registered sex offender from having a profile in a social networking group? Even the restriction as to parks, schools and such, have to name the specific facilities. The old "where children may congregate" has been repeatedly shot down by the courts as vague and ambiguous.

I agree that the limitations, in many cases are crappy, however the new legislation requiring all states to place them in one of three categories goes a long ways in defining who is a danger and who is not.

The real danger are the ones who have yet to be caught. So long as the individual is not acting in a criminal manner, they should not be treated as though they are.

I agree with you on these counts. I will not refute them. But like I said, any service may be refused to anyone, including social networking. And that includes sexual predators. And in likewise, is does not obstruct from the individule using their first ammendment right, as the original post stated by AaronDobbins. It only hinders that ability and forces them to put their speech elsewhere. They may take their social networking to the streets where their first ammendment may not be challenged, but his actions in doing so, may. (ie. Shouting; Disturbing the Peace) Other than that, social networking is still protected regardless of MySpace's decision to remove a group. Does it begin a new civil battle? It sure might stir up a bit, but still, MySpace has rights to remove sexual predators.

I imagine that this software runs to remove ALL persons in this large list, but are we certain that its not profiling even that database to remove on those with certain offenses.. Or at least omit those with certain offenses? Like DWP? ;] Maybe not...

Well, I've read several articles on this MySpace deal and so far, I haven't read anything that states specific prohibitions in respect to someone setting up a profile, using their own name and details. Of course, if they didn't use their own name, etc. that would be a different situation.

As I say, I just haven't read any specifics on that, although they may exist. Personally, I don't know anything about the MySpace website, nor their written user policy. If their user agreement did not specifically bar certain classes of people, that seems to me it would fall back on them. But, as I say, I am not familiar with their policies.

MySpace certainly does have the right to exclude registered sex offenders....my question is, "did their user agreement specifically exclude registered sex offenders?" That, I don't know for sure. If it did not and they now are making that written policy change, I can see them deleting the accounts. If they did not, I fail to understand why states are wanting to prosecute the offenders for merely setting up an account, when no specific policy was stated.

One more question comes to mind. I was a bit taken back by the statement, "thousands of registered sex offenders....." That seems like an extremely large number to me. The next question which came to mind was, "how did they match the names to the registered sex offender without specifics, such as a Social Security number, etc.?" Was it strictly a "name match?" If so, there could be a great number of "offended" people with names the same as some registered sex offenders.

The infamous "no fly list" comes to mind, where people such as the Alaskan Senator's wife, "Katherine Stevens" was added to the "no fly list," due to the similarity of her name to that of musician, "Cat Stevens."

And like you, I don't know that answer for sure either. I havn't read anything about the states wanting to prosecute these individules on MySpace, they just wanted the information on WHO was listed on myspace and who was removed. In that, they would be able to take that information, research their content and contacts, etc.. Just to see what they have been doing, and to insure that they havn't been doing the naughty. And if evidence prooves they have violated in terms of messaging underaged children, then prosecution may occur.

That, is my best guess on what is happening here. But, privacy has its policy and MySpace is fighting for that, even for the sex offenders, to decline the trade of private information. Many would say "why? why help them?" But then Privacy Advocats why "why not? everyone deserves their privacy". Anyone hear a "big brother" shout? That the government will get their way no matter what?? Well, MySpace is fighting that and we'll see what comes of it.

I don't know how these matches are coming about, or how they could link even those profiles that are registered under false identities and pictures. I guess they cannot obtain those, but if they can picture match, that is one system they are able to use. Given technology, faces can be matched, and therefore can run through the entire MySpace picture database looking for these pictures. That, and some information, maybe they verify that with other information as well, before they remove the content.

MySpace, on one hand shoud let the public know how they are conducting their "profiling", but on the other hand, if they did that, people would know how to bump around it before they could get to us. Are they then, banning IP addresses of those removed? Don't know that either. ;\

In fact, its much like the services action. "Vendor may deny service to anyone for any reason."
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Actually the two statements "Vendor may deny service to anyone for any reason." and "Vendor is not responsible for stolen or damaged property" are not legal statements.

First a Vendor MAY NOT deny service to anyone, though they post the signs. There have been numerous lawsuits to vendors, including mine, that have proven that. In my case the Judge said that just because you make a statement does not alieviate you from the law.

Which brings the second statement into account. Even though you see these signs does not mean they are not responsible. They are.

One of the biggest tricks in business it to make statements that there is nothing you can do and the business has all the power. Over time people believe this to be true. But making a statement does not make it true in court.

On the topic of myspaces actions. There is a difference between a pedifile, adaphile, rapist and sexual offender. Being a Sexual Offender does not automatically make you one of the other 3. I have a friend who is a sexual offender for visiting a nude beach that got raided. So he shouldn't be allowed a myspace account?

The law needs to change to tell us what TYPE of offender these people are. Sexual Offender is way to broad and does not always mean that somebody was at risk of the behavior of the person. It also doesn't always mean there was even a victim or that the person is harmful to society.

You could be right about the matching pictures. That brings to mind the question as to what pictures they may have used. I remember long ago when the chat rooms were so popular. People often used rather deceptive pictures and profiles. One of my son's friends had her profile there, trying to snag a man. The usual, "blonde hair, blue eyes and weight proportional to height." Some poor guy showed up at her door...she opened it...and he quickly realized that 5'1" and 480 pounds were probably not "proportional.":) He literally ran.

I'm not sure either as to what the states want to do with the information. Personally, I support MySpace in defending the privacy. As they state, they are merely following the law. I respect them for that. Should the states not like that, their first move must be to change the laws....not merely ride roughshod over them by shouting "sex offender," knowing that most people make no distinction as to the level of dangerousness nor the type of offense which tacked the title to the individual.

Instead of email addresses, their IP should be released from their provider and submitted (since some rotate, and some are static), at least the less tech savvy individules wouldn't be able to log in. Those smart enough could at least use a VPN or such to browse from a different location.

"Lobbyists working on behalf of MySpace are asking for federal laws that would require sex offenders to register their e-mail address"

What's the point? It's realy easy to get several e-mail addresses... And how are they going to know how many addresses they have? So you would solve nothing with this. Just give people a false warm fuzzy feeling.

gj MySpace. They should *not* hand over the profiles, but definitely should remove them...kudos. Besides, there's enough cached versions of those pages on Google that Law Enforcement agencies could easily sweep through it and dig up the info... shame on our gov't, they have to do the legwork themselves...

Really... Wow, shame on you. When is it better to protect the guilty than the innocent? The answer is "Never." Shouldn't we use every resource to protect the children?

So, deleting their account... Now that is a punishment. They have to take an extra five minutes away from pursuing their victims to open a new account and do the EXACT SAME THING.

Unless, they have monitored a constant IP log and are able to keep them off of their static IP.. Sure they would be able to switch providers, or call their provider asking for an IP swap due to whatever they can come up with.. But they're off nonetheless..

Unfortunatly, they will then be able to log in as someone else, making it more difficult to locate. yikes. But then there is "We are doing everything short of breaking the law to ensure that the information about these predators gets to the proper authorities,".. Can't help but think that they are doing something about it.

oh.... so thats why my profile got deleted
lol