A judge has thrown out a $30 million dollar lawsuit against MySpace that was filed by parents of a 13-year-old Austin girl that was molested by someone she met on the world's most popular social networking website. U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks ruled that MySpace was protected under the 1996 Communications Decency Act and couldn't reasonably be expected to verify everyone's age.
Sparks said the Communications Decency Act gives immunity to MySpace and that social networking websites should be shielded from crippling lawsuits from user-created content. In this case, the 13-year-old pretended to be 18-years-old and created a MySpace account. She was sexually molested during a meeting that she arranged with 19-year-old Peter Solis.
MySpace has always contented that it is not responsible for what users post and has implemented a couple child protection features in the past year. The lawyers for girl obviously think different and are vowing to file an appeal.
