Sex Offenders Snared in MySpace Web

Texas officials using ID information ceded by MySpace have nabbed seven sex offenders trolling the online networking site. Six were arrested for violating parole, which barred them from using the internet, and another had failed to register as a sex offender with the local police. The seven men had been convicted of assaulting kids as young as 4 years old.

The arrests followed several states' controversial demands that MySpace surrender info on sex offenders with profiles on the site. The News Corp. subsidiary last year commissioned a background-checking firm to create a national database of sex offenders, after reports that some of its teenage users had been abducted by people contacted through MySpace. (More MySpace stories.)