Be The First to Do It Wrong

The Commonwealth of Virginia is teaming up with MySpace to require sex offenders to register their email addresses with the state as well as their home addresses. That way, if one of them there pervs creates a MySpace account, the PO-Leese can swoop down and nab them.

Wonderful. Brilliant. And showing a complete misunderstanding of how the Internet works.

An email address and a home address are fundamentally different. Most people only live in one, maybe two locations. You just can't be in two places at the same time. But email is not bound by those physical restraints. You can have as many email accounts that you want, as anonymous as you want. There are companies that provide email accounts that only exist for ten minutes. Some go through proxies and are untraceable. How on earth can you expect a sex offender - who already has issues with follow social norms to begin with - to use only one email account when they're setting up a profile with the goal of committing sex crimes?

I have no less than ten email accounts, some of which aren't even mine. Think there's any way to ensure that I've listed all ten? Or can't get more?

It's a waste of manpower and resources.

Sometimes, the reason no one has done something before is because it's a stupid idea. Virginia just seems to be behind the curve in realizing it.