Myspace Cadet

By Matthew Lysiak
Serf City
Volume 1 Issue 2


Republican attorney general candidate Jeanine Pirro
has finally found her voice and her campaign issue, and
it has taken the shrill form of the political alarmist.
MySpace.com, the social networking site popular with
teens and pre-teens, has become Pirro’s primary campaign
issue as she stumps across the state convening public forums
to alert the public of the imminent danger the site poses to
our children.
“These criminals are devious and cunning and they know
what they need to do to access children,” Pirro told the Associated
Press. “MySpace in particular has gotten tremendous
exposure to preteens and teens. It is a vehicle that has entered
into the teen culture to find and meet new friends... this new
vehicle is a cultivating and breeding ground for pedophiles.”
In a letter to Rupert Murdoch, the head of media
conglomerate News Corp., which owns MySpace, Pirro
suggested a forum between site owners, parent groups and
law enforcement experts to come up with new ways to
protect children.
At first glance a forum such as the one Pirro suggests
looks innocent, perhaps even helpful. Little doubt exists that
pedophiles view such sites as predatory stalking grounds. It
is hard to imagine what harm could possibly come from a
consensual meeting of individuals with a mutual concern for
protecting the rights of children.
If only when politicians spoke they could be taken at
face value.
If Pirro were merely inviting MySpace owner Murdoch to
convene a forum, no problem would exist. Unfortunately,
Pirro is not merely a private citizen, nor is she merely attempting
to persuade the public or merely inviting Mr.
Murdoch to convene a gathering of concerned citizens. Pirro
is a public offi cial, with the force of the government behind
her words. When a public official calls out a private business
such as MySpace, words serve the purpose of a club with the
forceful smash of legislation always the implied threat.
While the government’s minor intervention in one site
may seem insignificant, Pirro’s attack on MySpace isn’t just
an isolated instance of a concerned public official; it is part
of a larger pattern of the government’s attempt to lay the
ground work down for an increase in regulation over the
Internet by instilling in the populace the key ingredient of
all reactionary laws: fear.
Fear of the wrong sex. Fear of the wrong political ideas.
Fear of the wrong tolerance.
And my God what about the poor defenseless, innocent
children!
Just as every issue in the spectrum of politics can be
divided into either freedom or oppression, with politicians
from both parties usually pushing for some form of self-aggrandizement
through the suppression of individual rights,
nowhere in the world is freedom more alive and the grasp of
government oppression more futile than through the electrical
pulse that is the Internet.
The Internet is the single greatest innovation we may
see in our lifetime, the power of which has the capability
to transcend the highest walls and the most imposing
of armies. Like the invention of the written language, the
implementation of roads, the first telegraph, the automobile,
and the television, the Internet is another step in the
long line of human accomplishments that makes the world
smaller and the transfer of knowledge more accessible to a
greater number of people.
Pirro is only the most recent in a long lineage of alarmists
who, in the name of the public good, will push for the suppression
of individual freedom through government regulation
whenever any new advancement of technology comes along.
Like all human advancements that empower individuals,
the fear mongers will come out of the woodwork and
step before the podium to declare the dangers that the
new freedom poses to the public good. Th e implied,
but never stated premise of the fear is simple: the individual
cannot be trusted with freedom and needs the
helpful hand of the government to make certain that
we stay in line.
This declaration of danger rarely comes in the form of a
reasoned analysis—rather, it usually arrives in tearful pleas
that attempt to bypass the intellectual fi lters and get a direct
hit on the emotional.
This is why the save-the-children pleas are especially eff ective.
On an international level, the United Nations is trying to
gain control of the Internet, with dictators knowing that the
freedom of information the Internet presents is a far greater
threat to their hold on power than any military. On a national
and local level the government is attempting to gain control of
the Internet through taxation and fear.
While the citizenry must be concerned about any government
attempts to suppress individual freedom, we must be especially vigilant in defending the access to the singular universal database of free
information. Th e free access to information
presupposes the basis for individual rights.
Unlike plants, humans must think rationally
and act on the correct thoughts to survive. If
a man chooses to plant his seeds at the wrong
time of year he will lose his harvest, starve,
and die. To deny or fi lter an individual’s information
is to deny or fi lter the very oxygen
that gives him life.
Jeanine Pirro may have a legitimate interest
in protecting children from sex predators.
Pirro may even have some helpful ideas to
off er up in regard to steps individual parents
can take to see the danger signs. Pirro insists
she isn’t “looking to shut anything down,” but
is merely seeking a forum to discuss whether
MySpace and other Internet social sites are, as
she puts it, “a vehicle” used by sex offenders
to find potential victims.
As comforting as it is that Pirro isn’t shutting
MySpace down, especially since MySpace
has not been accused of committing any actual
crimes, the issues that underlie Pirro’s political
posturing could have a much more serious
consequence. If the precedent of government
regulation is openly accepted as a necessary
evil, the citizenry should expect the government
to reach further and further into the
market of free ideas.Even in cyberspace there
comes a point where a line must be drawn.