MySpace, the hot youth-oriented social webspace, has agreed to delete the profiles of convicted sex criminals.
As at least one news sources is reporting, MySpace is using "innovative" software to identify and yank convicted sex fiends' profiles.
"Information was saved for law enforcement officials, [MySpace] chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam said.
"We've always intended to provide law enforcement with the information," Mr Nigam said.
"The last week has been about the mechanism to provide the information in a way so that someone charged by law enforcement doesn't get off because of a technicality."
What does that last sentence mean? Was that legal weasel talk? "Get off because of a technicality"? Get off from what, precisely? So is this dude Nigam saying that part of being a convicted sex criminal is losing the freedom of speech? When did that happen?
Hey, I think a scumbag is a scumbag, but I don't think the Constitution provides for the revocation of freedom of speech (or access to the toilet that MySpace is anyway) as punishment for anything. And what kind of a legal argument is he pushing?
The prevention of "getting off on a technicality" is a pretty vapid and empty rational for anything. I read of no mention of any court orders, by the way, and IMHO this shite is a flavor of what they call prior restraint (you may recall the case of the Pentagon Papers -New York Times v. United States - with the SCOTUS ruling for NYT - "no prior restraint was the rule except in very unusual circumstances") so barring someone from exercising his right to free speech is on very shaky constitutional grounds.
Pretty fishy, if you ask me, and MoveOn.org isn't very happy about it either.
And just what is this "innovative" software that MySpace is using? Sounds to me like an updated version of that Total Information Awareness crap that the Church committee shut down back in the seventies.
More of Alberto "War on Pornography" Gonzales' nonsense, if you ask me.