MySpace information causes arrest of sex offenders

A few weeks back, MySpace was issued subpoenas by various state attorney generals to provide information on sex offenders. At first, MySpace resisted giving this data to the attorney-generals, but soon capitulated and agreed to provide this information.
The attorney generals were looking for sex offenders who were maybe preying on children on MySpace, an objective which made it difficult for MySpace to oppose them. And now it looks like states are starting to act on the information supplied by MySpace.

Seven convicted sex offenders with profiles on MySpace.com have been arrested in what Texas officials said was the country's first large-scale crackdown of registered offenders who use the social networking Web site.
They were picked up after MySpace.com released the names of offenders with online profiles to the state Attorney General's Office, which had issued a subpoena for the site's subscriber information.

There are some privacy implications to supplying this information, but overall, it is incumbent on the state authorities and service providers to prevent their facilities from being used to exploit defenceless children. In that sense, this is a pretty good happening, and if it discourages more sex offenders from using the anonymity of the web for exploitation, even better.