Countermeasures

Say your 13-year-old daughter has a fake ID that tells the world she's 18. She uses it to get into a club that has an 18-and-over policy, and once inside she meets a guy who really is 18. Later, they leave the club and go to a restaurant, after which they decide to go to his place, where she's sexually assaulted by him. The club, you think, is responsible for enabling the fateful contact in the first place. After all, your daughter doesn't look a day over 16 regardless of how much makeup she uses, and regardless of what that fake ID might indicate.

You sue the club, claiming they created an unsafe, inappropriate environment for your underage daughter. The security personnel should have exercised some common sense; they saw how young she is; they shouldn't have allowed her into the club. The judge agrees with you and awards damages, but also chides you for failing to exercise your parental responsibility. The tragic event, he says, would have been far less likely to unfold had you paid more attention to your daughter's whereabouts in the middle of the night.

Fast forward to some future time. Same daughter, same age, but the world has changed in a few significant ways. Everyone has an implant that provides automatic identification to the network of scanners installed in every imaginable corner of life, and the club—which is the size of a large city—that your daughter wants to get into is staffed by androids. With the aid of a technology-savvy friend, your daughter has succeeded in altering the contents of her implant in order to gain access to the club. Her implant says she's 18, so there's no trouble getting in the door—the androids' vision is poor. Once inside, she meets a guy who really is 18. Later, they leave the club and go to a restaurant, after which they decide to go to his place, where she's sexually assaulted by him. The club, you think, is responsible for enabling the fateful contact in the first place. After all, your daughter doesn't look a day over 16 regardless of how much makeup she uses, and regardless of what that fake ID might indicate.

You sue the club, claiming they created an unsafe, inappropriate environment for your underage daughter. The security androids should have exercised some common sense; they saw how young she is; they shouldn't have allowed her into the club. The judge chides you for failing to exercise your parental responsibility. The tragic event, he says, would have been far less likely to unfold had you paid more attention to your daughter's whereabouts in the middle of the night. He disagrees with your contention regarding the club's responsibility, citing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The club, he explains, has some 100 million patrons and can't reasonably be expected to physically keep track of that many people in real time. Besides, he adds, your daughter misrepresented her age; she circumvented the club's safeguards that were specifically designed to protect her. This, he says, really isn't the club's fault.

Meanwhile, back in the present tense, that future scenario has come to pass. Last week's decision by a Texas judge dismissed the Doe v. MySpace, Inc. lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs argued that MySpace had failed to properly safeguard underage users. The judge invoked section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, citing the impossibility of verifying every MySpace user's age. While some observers see the decision as an overbroad interpretation of the CDA, the ruling, for now, seems to add yet another layer of armor to the concept of immunity for service providers when their customers go astray.

The Internet isn't going to go away, service providers are needed to connect us to it, and someone will always find a way to circumvent rules and safeguards. But with or without the Net—and its myriad opportunities for getting into trouble—kids still need guidance. They shouldn't be expected to raise themselves. Instead of blaming the club for the kid's fake ID, how about making sure that underage kid isn't out all night, hanging out with much older people in places that are sure to bring trouble eventually?

I know. There aren't enough hours in the day, especially in a single-parent home. Okay, here's an idea for a lawsuit less likely to be affected by the Communications Decency Act. How about launching a class action against ourselves for permitting and propagating a society that demands ever-increasing piles of cash in order to exist, thereby ensuring ever-decreasing slices of time that ought to be spent with our kids, but are spent, instead, at increasingly time-hungry jobs? We might not win in court, but our kids couldn't possibly lose.