The War On MySpace Heads To The Courts

This from the other day, but certainly lonely libertarian worthy: Girl, 14, sues MySpace over alleged sexual assault.

The thrust of the legal argument is that MySpace does not take enough steps to protect children from adults. But just what the hell is a networking website supposed to do? Unless it's suddenly become illegal to have children communicating with adults via the internet, how can a website have any obligation to prevent such communication?

Of course, the more you delve into it, the more ridiculous it gets. The best comment I saw was from Brian Doherty at Hit and Run, who is more concise and clever than I could hope to be:

Both whoever their telephone provider might be, and most likely both the state of Texas and the federal government (ostensible owners of the roads the accused rapist used to meet her and take her to the scene of the crime) seem at fault as well in facilitating his heinous action, as they too surely are aware--or should have been, if they weren't so damn criminally negligent--that sexual predators are on the phone and on the roads.