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.
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.
"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?