Reuters reports that News Corp.'s MySpace will begin offering within the next 30 days a technology to identify and block convicted sex offenders from the online social network.

The potential for sex offenders to prey on the largely teen audience has been a sticking point for MySpace, along with copyright infringement issues.

The technology, called Sentinel Safe, will let MySpace search state and federal databases to seek out and delete MySpace profiles of registered sex offenders. It will be the first national database that brings together about 46 state sex offender registers.

"We are committed to keeping sex offenders off MySpace," the site's chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in a statement.

Earlier this year, MySpace created "safe" areas for companies to post their ads, allaying advertisers' fears of their ads running near objectionable content.