MySpace and Practicality

I‘ve posted several times about MySpace and its potential liability for predators and the like.  In a fascinating story, Wired takes on the networking site’s arguments that it is impractical for it to catch predators.

I’ve been invited here to witness the end-game of a police investigation that grew from 1,000 lines of computer code I wrote and executed some five months earlier. The automated script searched MySpace’s 1 million-plus profiles for registered sex offenders — and soon found one that was back on the prowl for seriously underage boys.

Note that this search would not have done anything relevant (so far as I know, anyway) in connection with the Austin, Texas events that led to a lawsuit against MySpace.  (See this post for the basics, but there are several other posts too.)