According to the Associated Press, “MySpace News brings to a much larger audience that user-recommendation capability already available through Digg and Time Warner Inc.’s Netscape.”
“It also marks the site’s further inroads into becoming an Internet portal akin to Yahoo Inc. and others.”

Digg and Netscape rely on user submissions. “MySpace will be able to scan thousands of Web Journals and news sites and group results by categories such as sports and politics.

MySpace will go further than Google Inc.’s news of offering by letting users vote on items, helping to determine what makes the front or section pages.

MySpace will pull and display headlines from outside new sites.
Dan Strauss, whose group helped develop the news service said, “MySpace, like Google, would let publishers exclude their items from the site.”
Diamond Summers, a sophomore at JCU said, “I am a MySpace user and I find it to be a great site.”

Myspace is one of the most visited sites on the Internet.
The controversial social net-working site has almost 200 million profiles.
Myspace began in 2003 and was recently sold to News Corp.

The judge struck down the law as a violation of free speech.

Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. said the Child Online Protection Act fails to address threats that have emerged since the law was written.

This includes online predators on social-networking sites like NewsCorp.’s MySpace, because it targets only commercial Web publishers, according to USA Today.

“Defendant’s study showed that even the worst performing software filters are far more effective than COPA would be at protecting children from sexually explicit material on the Web,” Reed said.

This was Congress’s second effort to shelter children from online porn.
“The U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2004 a temporary injunction blocking the law from taking effect,” Reed said.

On March 22, he issued a permanent injunction.

The law would have criminalized Web sites that allow children to access material deemed “harmful to minors” by “contemporary community standards”, according to USA Today.

The sites would have been expected to require a credit card number or other proof of age.

Penalties include a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison.

According to USA Today, to defend the nine-year-old law, government lawyers attacked software filters as burdensome and less effective, even though they have previously defended their use in public schools and libraries.

That case was over a 2000 law requiring schools and libraries to use software filters if they receive certain federal funds. The high court upheld that law in 2003.
The plaintiffs anticipate the Justice Department to appeal.

Justice spokesman Charles Miller said the department was still reviewing the decision and has ‘made no determination as to what the government’s next step will be.’

“I would hope that Attorney General (Alberto) Gonzales would save the U.S. public’s money and not try to further defend what is an unconstitutional statute,” said John Morris, a lawyer with the Center for Democracy and Technology, who feels that “the money could better be used to help educate kids about Internet safety issues.”

The plaintiffs argued that filters work best because they let parents set their own limits.

The law addresses material accessed by children under 17, applying to only those sites on U.S. grounds.

Although the government argued for the use of credit cards as a screening device, Reed said he saw no evidence of any accurate way to verify the age of Internet users. And he agreed sites that require a credit card to view certain pages would see a sharp drop-off in users, according to USA today.

The 1998 law followed the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This was Congress’ first attempt to regulate online pornography.

The Supreme Court in 1997 deemed key portions of the law unconstitutional because it was too vague and trampled on adults’ rights.

“Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance, which was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage.”

In that 5-4 ruling, the court found that state lawmakers were justified in passing the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to unions between a man and woman, according to The AP.

This I-957 will only apply to those couples that can have children. Before getting married, the couple would have to prove that they can have children in order to get a marriage license.

“All other marriages would be defined as ‘unrecognized’ and people in them would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits. It’s absurd,” said Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage & Children.

Haskins said opponents of same-sex marriage have never said that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation.

“When we talk about defending the institution of marriage, we’re talking about the union of a man and a woman,” she said. “Some of those unions produce children and some of them don’t.”

With I-957, it would be like dictating people’s choices in a way that is utterly ridiculous, Haskins said. The sponsor of the same-sex marriage measure in the House, Rep. Jamie Pedersen, said he supported the effort “to draw attention to the hypocrisy of some of those who oppose marriage equality” but opposed the initiative.

For the same reason, Pedersen doesn’t think same-sex couples should be excluded from marriage, nor should heterosexual married couples be forced to procreate, said Pedersen. “Supporters of I-957 must gather at least 224,800 valid signatures by July 6 to put it on the November ballot.”

Elizabeth Stiles, political science professor at John Carroll University, said, “Although the proposed initiative is a real initiative, I suspect its supporters do not expect it to pass. Instead, I believe that they want to attack the argument that gay people should not get married because they cannot have children.”

“The bill’s supporters want to point out that marriage is not the only reason heterosexuals marry and thus that particular argument against gay people marrying is a double standard,” Stiles said.

Already, 21 plaintiffs have sued the state of Michigan to keep benefits for their same-sex marriages after Michigan passed an amendment in 2004.