Commentary

Just An Online Minute... MySpace Accused Of Glorifying Killers

MySpace has triggered a lot of complaints in the company's brief existence. Schools have complained when students use pages to post about their teachers; parents have complained that pedophiles troll the site for victims; even a prosecutor in California complained when a defendant's mother, Laura Rangle, created a page on behalf of her 23-year-old daughter, Laura Medina, taking her side of the story to the Web.

Now, a city official in Houston is griping that family and friends of death row inmates have created MySpace pages on their behalf. Andy Kahan, director of the city's crime victims office, has written to MySpace, arguing that pages devoted to death row inmates glorify them, according to recent news accounts.

"Is it within your policy to allow the glorification of killers by giving them a platform to influence young minds?" Kahan wrote, according to the Associated Press. "Are there specific guidelines within MySpace that would prohibit giving convicted felons a platform for all the world to see?"

The pages, written and maintained by people who know the inmates, include information about their hobbies, interests, favorites songs and the like. In other words, they seek to humanize the inmates.

There doesn't seem to be anything illegal about that; in fact, lawyers defending death row inmates try desperately to humanize their clients. But a lawyer in a courtroom speaks to a very limited audience; MySpace offers people a way to persuade millions. That a group is complaining about the pages speaks to the power of MySpace and user-created media in general.

Presumably the group wants News Corp. to start censoring profiles--an unworkable idea on every level. Who would decide which profiles are deserving of MySpace pages? Surely, Kahan isn't the only person out there who would like to see a few profiles taken down.

And if News Corp did come up with some sort of censorship policy, it wouldn't take long before people found another way to publish their Web pages. And it certainly wouldn't take long before users fled the site in favor of other, less controlling platforms.





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