Protecting young actresses online - an idea.

I've tossed this around in my head for a while, and I've started putting serious consideration into it...

A while back, as a favor to a friend online who used to run the primary fan-site for the actress Julianna Mauriello (who, until recently, was underage), I made an effort to have any potentially slanderous material about her removed from the Internet. Despite being a fairly inexperienced teenage actress who still attended a regular New York high school and who wasn't quite at "celebrity" status, the Internet decided to react to her overall harmless TV presence in horrific ways, not only sharing her personal information on suspicious websites but creating a number of obscene materials that would surely have destroyed her career and reputation in the wrong hands. My friend got much of this removed, but I was inspired to take action as well, forcing much of the remainder offline by repeatedly contacting (and sometimes reporting) the host sites.

However, I came to realize while doing this that Julianna's treatment online is nothing out of the ordinary, as other young actresses such as Dakota Fanning seem to have garnered the same sort of unsavory "fanbase". Therefore, I think action should be taken, before one of these actresses is confronted face to face by an Internet creep and ends up in harm's way. I feared for quite a while that this would happen to Julianna (especially after she allegedly received disturbing personal threats from her online "fans"), but thankfully, this doesn't seem to have ever occurred.

I'm putting serious consideration into starting a website for this - a sort of coalition to raise awareness of how these actresses are treated, and to encourage the removal of any material or users from the Internet that could potentially destroy their career or terrorize their personal lives. Dealing with fame at a young age is hard enough... realizing that Internet weirdos are watching your every move and going out of their way to reshape your image as that of a mere physical object makes that a hell of a lot more difficult.

Though they may be more well known than a lot of us, they should have just as much right to live normal lives as anyone else their age. We just need to make sure that right is given to them.