Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

The other day I read a newspaper article about a teenager who had been abused, asking the U.S. government to legislate the internet:

A teenager who was adopted by a pedophile and endured years of Internet-distributed sexual torment -- tracked from afar by the Toronto police sex-crimes unit -- pleaded yesterday with U.S. legislators for laws to help govern cyberspace.

"If we can put a man on the moon, we can make the Net safe for kids," 13-year-old Masha Allen told the House subcommittee on oversight and investigation in Washington.

Now it must have come up with the phrase "Internet-distributed sexual torment" because I read the entire article and except for the fact that her abuser distributed pictures of her over the internet, the internet had nothing to do with her sexual torment. The person who did this to her was an American pedophile who adopted her for cash. The pictures, while illegal, aren't really part of her abuse.

It was the fact that police used the internet to release altered copies of those photos that they were able to find the girl.

I don't understand how this makes the internet unsafe for kids. There are lots of bad things on the internet, just as there are lots of good things, just like the real world. But people constantly seek to blame the distribution medium rather than the people that do the bad things.

Why isn't this young lady asking the government to make it illegal for pedophiles to adopt children? Or asking for stiffer penalties for child abuse? Those are the crimes. Putting photos on the internet is a byproduct of those crimes. And in this case those photos led police to the criminal.

Doesn't that mean that in this case the internet made a child safer?

So what does "making the net safe for kids" mean? Getting rid of all of the bad stuff? Getting rid of predators on MySpace?

Shouldn't we be more concerned about making the real world safe for kids? Or is the internet just an easier target?