News Corp, mother company of MySpace.com, yesterday announced that it would be spending "millions of dollars" to launch TV and online ad campaigns promoting internet safety for kids. No doubt motivated in large part by lawsuits, such as the one recently filed by a Travis County mother-daughter duo, that accuse MySpace of making it too easy for online predators to pick up underaged teens, and emotionally troubled youths like the 13-year-old girl who ran off with some dude from Indiana, the campaign will include commercials featuring 24's Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, dishing out some form of The More You Know-style admonishments. There will also be a downloadable guidebook to Internet safety for parents.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, though, responded by dismissing these latest measures as nothing more than "window-dressing," further accusing MySpace of resisting "real reform measures." He then went on to draw an analogy between the social networking site and pain medication:

“Parents have to grant permission for their child take an over-the-counter medicine like Tylenol in school, and parents should also have the opportunity to decide whether their child should have access at school to an online playground that attracts dangerous predators who are looking to rob a child of their innocence and destroy a childhood. Social networking site operators are part of the problem, and to be part of the solution they must do more than pay lip service to providing a safe environment for children.”

Back in 2002, Abbott launched both the Cyber Crimes Unit and the Fugitive Unit; the former employs adults masquerading as naive teenagers in Internet chat rooms, while the latter hunts down convicted child sex offenders who've skipped parole. Recently, the CCU was given a $300,000 grant from the US Department of Justice to establish a task force on Internet Crimes Against Children. To date, the Texas AG Office claims as many as 470 arrests and convictions against 45 men as a result of these initiatives.

As for large sites like MySpace, which now has well over 90 million subscribers is has surpassed Yahoo! as the most visited domain on the net (in the US), Abbott suggested back in May that better age verification measures be implemented.

“The incorrigible nature of sexual predators requires public officials, law enforcement, industry leaders and parents across Texas to join together to make the Internet a safer place,” added Attorney General Abbott. “The law enforcement community will remain vigilant against child sex predators, but without the commitment of social networking Web site operators to put meaningful precautions in place, no child is safe from the unwanted advances of social networking site or chat room predators.”

Unrelated photo by dboy on flickr