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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.'"
At some point there will have to be a decision on where an "Internet company" really is. You simply can not be subject to all the laws of all the places on the Internet.
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.
Put the company outside the jurisdiction of concern.
The AGs should not be able to do this until they can demonstrate laws were broken. Otherwise they are making up the rules as they go along. Rules that have not been approved by a law making body.
Topix should be able to petition a judge to shut down any talk of remediation until the AGs present formal charges.
Cops are just doing what they're told, it's not like that kind of focused effort comes from rank-and-file officers.
And how would that be remotely legal at all?
I strongly urge people to read the background information in the links before knee jerking. Here are some pertinent lines:
“In fact, a large percentage of the posts in some Kentucky forums contain explicit, vulgar, obscene and defamatory posts about citizens, including children.”
According to a press release from Conway’s office, the tools provided by Topix.com to remove the abusive posts are ineffective unless consumers agree to pay a $19.99 fee.
Before I go any further, I want to say that I feel strongly that no one has the right to not be offended. There are many in the US who feel as I do, and I believe that higher law, including the Constitution agrees with this, or at least doesn't contradict it. That said, freedom and anarchy are not the same. People also have the right to protect themselves and their children from being defamed or slandered. Charging someone who might not otherwise access your site if they were not being slandered seems quite ridiculous to me.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
In Soviet Russia, post removes Attorney General!
Wait ... didn't that also happen to some AG named Elliott something-or-other in New York when details of his "hooker dates" leaked?
So move your servers to Kanuckistan. Welcome to the Great White North - soon to be the Great Green North, thanks to global warming.
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.
The news does this already. Years ago journalists went from wanting to "Deliver the news" to "Change the world" Scandal sells, rebutting a scandal not so much. Cue Fox News jokes, but all the outlets are guilty the only difference is the slant.
Today if you are a white male anyone can pretty much say whatever they want about you without it being considered actionable. There is libel and slander, but it is difficult to prove actual malice. Without that it is going to be a tough fight in court to get anywhere with libel or slander.
However, if you are in what is considered to be a protected group, such as women, African-Americans or other groups like this, it can easily be considered a violation of federal law to post comments which are derogatory without even getting into libel or slander. This is a side effect of "hate speech" laws that have come about.
Of course we are all familiar with the idea that if a member of a protected class is murdered and the State does not convict anyone the accused can be tried again (and again and again until convicted) under federal civil rights laws. The idea of double jeopardy has fallen by the wayside when it comes to protected groups.
I would say a web site that charges a fee to remove comments from a forum about a protected group is just asking for trouble on a federal level. Sooner or later they are going to run into someone that gets the attention of a big-name bigmouth like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson Sr. I wouldn't think you would have to go very far to find someone like Barney Franks that could exert some influence on behalf of a gay person being charged a fee to remove some anti-gay comment.
For "unsupervised" forums there may be some cover, but I would imagine it is just a matter of time before this is noticed. Sure, a Slashdot comment may be modded down. But if a unmoderated forum allows comments to stick around and be visible it better be a white male only forum because anything else can get you into serious trouble.
We all have to watch out for the civil rights of protected groups or else they will suffer grevious harm. Right?
"...no one has the right to not be offended..."
Fuck you.
They taught me not to follow "unlawful orders" when I was in the military.
Following orders is a very bad excuse for doing something you know is wrong.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
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.
I have belonged to moderated forums.. I see nothing wrong with it.. For the most part removing posts, and censoring and banning people who don't comply with the TOS is done to provide a product to the standard that the owner and administrator of the site determines. I am not bound to these sites, and I have alternative avenues available to express my views.. To give an alternative example.. If I were to join depression and suicide prevention forums, and continued to post comments on the joys and best ways to commit suicide, and to attack various users on why they haven't killed themselves yet.. It would be negligent and wrong for the owners and administrators of the forum to leave my posts there just for "public record".. The different forums I have visited have a wide range of participation, and the users and the moderators play a part in the final product and whether or not I continue to participate.. But I do so with full knowledge that the owners and administrators of these forums have the right to perform quality control. It's a fine line. Too much reigning in is bad, and not enough or none can be bad as well.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
What interests me is the bias of the TechCrunch article, which is along the lines of "powerful attorneys general bully a beleaguered business because it makes them look good." WTF? Why is it assumed that Topix is unfairly under attack from the government, and the attorneys general are only doing what they're doing in order to bolster their careers?
The articles didn't give me a lot to go on, and I've never heard of Topix before, so I have to generalize. Lots of forums are moderated in one way or another, but this is the first time I've heard of one that turned "express moderation" into a profit center. But the point is, I don't start out assuming businesses are the "good guys" and the attorneys general are the "bad guys". My assumption would be that if 33 attorneys general are trying to get a company to change its behavior, they're doing it because they must have gotten quite a few complaints, not because they're attention whores. Businesses generally aren't looking out for my interests; they're looking to make money. I'll take the attorneys general over businesses any day, even if that causes butthurt for CEOs like Chris Tolles.
Most of the Topix small town boards are complete cesspools. It's like the old fashioned small-town gossip phone tree, except 1) it's completely anonymous and 2) millions of people can access it easily.
A lot of these small towns are trying to increase tourism and bring new industries into their communities. Having a public forum where their citizens are anonymously posting vitriolic comments about other citizens is not going to attract tourism or industry.
Sent from my iPhone
"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]
Oh and he used campaign money to rent hotel rooms for his hookups.
Unless you were there, I don't see how you can make that claim:
" the prosecutors found no evidence that Mr. Spitzer had used public money or campaign funds to pay for his encounters with prostitutes, he said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/nyregion/07spitzer.html?_r=1&hp
And it's interesting how you left out all the good things he did in his career, not the least of which was taking on the Gambino crime family.
http://www.ag.ny.gov/media_center/2002/jun/jun04a_02.html
Does anyone REALLY care that he got down with some hookers? Are we really still so prude?
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
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?
My assumption would be that if 33 attorneys general are trying to get a company to change its behavior, they're doing it because they must have gotten quite a few complaints, not because they're attention whores.
When the AG's issue press releases instead of talking to the company about their concerns, you should assume the AG's are doing it for the media attention. According to the article, the AG's did this with both press releases. The first time, the release lied by claiming they had sent a letter to to company when the letter wasn't postmarked until five days later. The second time, the AG's never expressed to the company the changes they'd like to see made before villifying them in the press.
Maybe the article is wrong and the company is lying about the AG's behavior. The article doesn't say whether the reporter tried to get the AG's side of the story, which probably means the reporter didn't. However, if the accusations in the article are true, then then, yes, the AG's were acting like "attention whores".
Eliot Ness didn't lose his job for blowing 80000 dollars on hookers a thousand dollars an hour.
Yes, we care about the hookers. Not because they're hookers, but because when an Attorney General is involved with an organized ring of anything illegal, then he's a hypocrite and has huge conflict of interest problems. And when a hypocrite gets to make the rules, he isn't affected by them - so he has no motivation to make sure they're just and practicable. He got caught by a money laundering law that he had passed so he could catch other people doing the same thing. He demanded very high standards from everybody else, it's why he was elected Governor in the first place. So now he gets to pay the piper.
You honestly don't see a problem with the Attorney General of a state being involved with a madam? Because it was going on while he was the Attorney General - the person in charge of prosecutions across the state. The conflict of interest posed by a state's top prosecutor being involved in an organized criminal enterprise is simply unacceptable, even if you think that the particular crime in question ought not be a crime at all. Was Spitzer protecting his call girls from prosecution while prosecuting others? What would have happened if the criminal enterprise in question started to blackmail Spitzer? Things can go seriously south in all kinds of unpleasant ways from here. Supposing the outfit he got the call girls from hired thugs to shake people down. How is Spitzer supposed to put a stop to that?