Gary D. Robertson, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7/24/07

Attorney General Roy Cooper championed a bill Tuesday that would require children to receive parental permission before creating profiles on social networking Web sites like MySpace.com, and require the Web sites to enact procedures for verifying the parents' identity and age.

"All we're doing is giving parents the right to make a choice whether their children can go online," Cooper told a House judiciary committee. Cooper has sought this and other requirements to reduce the threat for children to be lured by sexual predators on MySpace and similar sites.

Cooper's office said Tuesday that MySpace found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the site. Cooper spokeswoman Noelle Talley said MySpace provided the total to state officials last week. Advocates for Internet-based industries and privacy issues testified against establishing parental verification standards, saying that they would be found unconstitutional in court because they prohibit free speech or impede interstate commerce.

The plan also isn't foolproof, they said, because information can be fabricated by the computer user or a child can type in a parent's information. The parental verification requirement "makes promises to consumers that cannot be kept," said Emily Hackett, executive director of the Washington-based Internet Alliance, whose clients include AOL, Yahoo and VeriSign. Sen. Walter Dalton, a primary sponsor of the bill, scoffed at the testimony.

"I don't buy any of those arguments I just heard," said Dalton, D-Rutherford, adding that he and Cooper's office believed the parental verification requirements could withstand judicial scrutiny. The bill would also make it a felony for registered sex offenders to access the sites. The bill, which already passed the Senate and is part of a large anti-sexual predator measure, was sent to a subcommittee for more work.