Attorney General Roy Cooper announced Tuesday morning that more than 2,100 sex offenders from North Carolina were found on the social networking website MySpace.

Cooper subpoenaed MySpace, making the website turn over the names, IP addresses and emails of 2,116 convicted sex offenders in the state of North Carolina.  Cooper plans to share the information with local law enforcement.

Cooper has now requested similar information from Facebook.

“It’s no secret that child predators are on these web sites,” Cooper said in a written 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.”

MySpace was the first social networking site to create a technology that was able to track down sex offenders.  Cooper wants Facebook and other social networking sites that are popular among younger kids to take the same steps in tracking down sex offenders.

According to MySpace, all convicted sex offenders that were tracked have been removed from the web site; however this does not include sex offenders who have not been convicted.  The information provided by MySpace also does not include sex offenders who may be using aliases or those that are not registered.

Cooper has asked his SBI Computer Crimes Unit, which leads the NC Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, to work with local law enforcement to use this information to help keep communities safe.

According to a press release, Cooper helped win a new state law last year that bans convicted sex offenders from social networking sites where children are members.  A violation of the measure, which took effect December 1, 2008, is a felony.