More than 2,100 registered N.C. sex offenders were on MySpace.

Attorney General Roy Cooper announced today that the social networking site turned over the names, IP and e-mail addresses of 2,116 convicted sex offenders in response to a subpoena.

"It's no secret that child predators are on these web sites," he said in a statement. "Turning over information about these predators to law enforcement helps, but MySpace, Facebook and other social networks need to do much more to protect kids online."

After a public tussle with Cooper in 2007, MySpace released the names of 245 registered sex offenders it found on its Web site. At the time, some tech observers questioned why Cooper did not just issue a subpoena.

In keeping with a gentler approach of recent months, Cooper struck a more conciliatory tone today, noting that MySpace was the first social networking site to develop technology to find and remove sex offenders. 

Since Dec. 1, it has been against state law for sex offenders to belong to sites where children are also members. Cooper is forwarding the information to local sheriffs, the State Bureau of Investigation's Computer Crimes Unit and probation officers.

Roy Cooper says cooperation will work better than lawsuits or new laws.

The state attorney general said this afternoon that he wants to work with social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook to protect children from sexual predators, rather than join a multi-state lawsuit or pass new state or federal laws.

"Technology is racing ahead so quickly that if we would have to win a court case over a period of years or if we happen to win a new law, it may be obsolete by the time it comes around to enforcing it," he told Dome.

Still, he said he would not rule out the other approaches in part because the threat helps make sure the companies are willing to work with him.

"We're emphasizing to them right now how critical it is for them to do it themselves," he said.

Cooper will not push any new social networking laws this session, though he previously supported a bill that made it a crime for a registered sex offender to use the sites.

He said he will share the information he's received from subpoenas with local law enforcement officials, who may begin prosecutions. He's also going to work with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to collect data from other law enforcement agencies.

Roy Cooper says a task force on social networking did not do its job.

Speaking at the spring conference of the National Association of Attorneys General in Washington this afternoon, the attorney general disagreed with a task force that said sex predators are not a major problem on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created by 49 attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online.

Its 278-page report, released in January, said that children were unlikely to be propositioned online and teens were willing participants.

In brief remarks at the conference, Cooper said he shares the concerns of other attorneys general about the report.

He said the task force interpreted its mission in an "overly broad" way and "did not concentrate on what we asked them to do." 

After promoting state legislation and considering multistate litigation, Cooper said he now has hopes that technological advances on identity verification can address the problem, along with education and law enforcement efforts.

Roy Cooper is in Washington today.

The state attorney general will speak at the spring session of the National Association of Attorneys General at the Fairmont Hotel.

He'll be joined in a discussion on legal issues surrounding social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. 

He'll be joined by attorneys general Bill McCollum of Florida and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Spokeswoman Noelle Talley said that Cooper was scheduled to arrive in Washington Sunday night, before several inches of snow hit the capital.

Cooper has long sparred with social networking sites over parental consent and the presence of sex offenders online.

The state House and Senate need to work out their differences on a proposed law that would make it a low-grade felony for registered sex offenders to use social networking web sites.

Sen. Walter Dalton, a Rutherfordton Democrat who is running for lieutenant governor, said the House deleted provisions that should have been included, such as making it a felony to lie to an SBI agent and making  in-person solicitation of minors and online solicitation separate offenses.

Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's office said they want those provisions added back to the bill, Lynn Bonner reports.

State Attorney General Roy Cooper started pushing for the law last year. Back then, the proposal included a requirement to have social networking sites obtain parental consent before they allowed children to join.

Since then, MySpace and Facebook came to agreements with state attorneys general to add safeguards to protect minors from sexual predators.

Many sections of the original bill, including the provision that would have required parental consent for a child to join a social networking site,  have been removed.

Eric Smith was a member of his high school's "Potsmokers Club."

Smith, who is now a Republican candidate for superintendent of public instruction, listed the club as one of his activities on his MySpace profile.

Smith promoted his campaign on the profile, but he recently changed its privacy settings to allow it to be viewed only by his friends. (An archived version is below.)

"There was a group of us that rode skateboards, and that's what we called ourselves," Smith said.

Asked if the group actually smoked marijuana, Smith said he doesn't think that is relevant to his campaign for the state's top school officer.

He added that he thinks several other former group members also list the club on their MySpace pages, though he acknowledged that none of them are candidates for public office.

Is John Edwards Web 2.0 strategy working?

A study of Web surfing habits of visitors to the presidential candidates official Web sites does not show any impressive numbers for Edwards' other sites.

The former North Carolina senator has embraced the Internet in his 2008 campaign, using Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, not to mention Essembly, PartyBuilder, 43 Things, Ning, Metacafe and TagWorld.

But a survey by Politico.com and Compete shows visitors to JohnEdwards.com were not any more likely to visit his social networking sites than those on other Democratic campaign sites.

In addition, Edwards was not generating any more traffic:

Traffic to [U.S. Sen. Barack] Obama’s official website in September was almost 20 percent higher than that of [U.S. Sen. Hillary] Clinton, whose traffic was itself twice as high as that of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

It's Facebook's turn in the hot seat.

A group of state attorneys general including Roy Cooper have turned their attention from MySpace to upstart social networking site Facebook.

On Monday, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said his office has subpoenaed Facebook and accused it of not protecting young users from sexual predators.

Cooper said he met with Facebook last week on the issue. (Reuters)

Investigators from New York who posed as young girls and upset parents said Facebook did not respond quickly to complaints that they were solicited online. (NYT)

Roy Cooper is not happy with the legislature.

According to News 14 reporter Tim Boyum's blog, the attorney general was "pretty blunt" about his unhappiness with the legislature's handling of a bill to require minors get parental permission to use social networking sites like MySpace.

He was particularly mad about the social networking parental permission part of the bill that was axed and penalties that were lessened.

Cooper blamed lobbyists for stalling the bill, which passed the Senate but did not move in the House. The bill remains alive for next year's short session, however.