N.C. Age Verification Bill and MySpace

While the Senate Commerce Committee held its hearing on Internet safety earlier today, the state legislature in North Carolina had its own cyber safety hearing on a bill that would mandate age verification and require anyone under the age of 18 to get parental consent before joining a social networking site. According to this Associated Press report, "advocates for Internet companies and privacy issues testified against the proposed restrictions, saying the broad parental verification standards would be found unconstitutional because they prohibit free speech or impede interstate commerce." Other opponents pointed out ways that the measures could simply be circumvented.

News also broke today that MySpace has found and deleted over 29,000 profiles of registered sex offenders on its site, over four times the original estimate that had been reported. As MySpace announced in May, the company agreed to turn over the data to the North Carolina attorney general and several other state AGs as part of its effort to identify and ban registered sex offenders.