Slashdot Mirror
The Story of Dealing With 33 Attorneys General
microbee writes "Early this year, Topix, a popular community forum, faced investigation from 33 state Attorneys General for the practice of charging a fee for 'expedited review' of content that was flagged as inappropriate. The case was settled on August 9th, with Topix dropping the fees in question. Now TechCrunch is running an article by Topix CEO Chris Tolles, in which he talks about his experiences dealing with so many Attorneys General. Quoting: 'This is going to happen more — The States' Attorneys General are the place that complaints about your company will probably end up. This is especially true if you host a social or community based site where people can post things that others may dislike. And, there's no downside to attacking a company based in California for these guys (MySpace, Facebook, Craigslist have all been targets in the past couple of years). Taking complaints from your citizenry and turning them into political capital is simply too good an opportunity for these guys to pass up.'"
This ain't about free speech, this is a method of extortion they took down.
"Oh, somebody posted something nasty about you. Pay $20 to take it down." Like that isn't ripe for abuse by the site admins. "Hmm, BillG1020 lives in a wealthy neighbourhood. Clickety-clickety. Let's see how long he takes."
It's a real pity the AG's didn't go further and block removal of comments at all. That's why Slashdot works so well, nasty crud gets modded down most times, but it's still there for the dirty minded buggers to read if they want. You're free to say it and I'm free to ignore it.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Dunno about the legality of it, but not being able to remove comments would prevent a slippery slope of editing the public record.
All forums but one I belong to don't allow originators or commentators to remove posts because they would break the flow of the conversation. Admittedly that's about seventeen of however many millions there are.
Consider a meat-space equivalent. Some white guy shouts something nasty at a crowd of blacks in Detroit. The news crews have filmed the incident from the start to the riot where the hospital is burned to the ground. Now the white guy goes and asks the film crews to cut his words out so that it looks like he was just standing there when the crowd went wild by itself.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Well then I guess they only provide services to people in the state of california. In reality they don't, you know it, I know it, they knew it. It's the same reason why FB has drawn the ire of both the german and canadian governments. Because the internet removes borders, and as such they become subject to the laws of other places.
Om, nomnomnom...
A friend of mine came to me when she found disparaging things were posted about her on one of the Topix threads, and wanted me to help her to use her debit card to pay for having it removed. Being unfamiliar with Topix's extortion, I was naturally very surprised to see that they offered this "expedited investigation" or whatever it was called. I convinced her to wait a few days and see whether the normal channel of removal worked.
Oddly enough, it did work. I was able to flag the post over the course of a couple of days, and it was eventually removed. So don't say that they *never* removed posts based on the free system. They did at least once.
Under current laws internet companies are treated the same as mail-order companies -
They are subject to the laws of whatever state they reside (say: Vermont) plus the central, general government if their goods (say teddy bears) cross state lines. (If they don't cross lines, then only Maine has authority.) In my example the business would not be subject to foreign government outside of Vermont, just the same way a Polish business is not subject to the governments of Germany or France or other EU states.
And there's a good reason for that: No seller or citizen (like me) should be subject to a government where he has no representation.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"Attorneys General" is correct. This is because English is f'd up.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/compounds.htm
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
No, it's because we're referring to 33 attorneys, not 33 generals. You modify the basic noun, not the modifiers. English would be more f'd up if you didn't.
Imagine if this was correct english:
"I'm a rebel without a cause. You're a rebel without a cause too. We're rebel without a causes!"
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?