Smart Keywords

Apple is being sued by 27,000 South Koreans for privacy violations where each is seeking a million won ($932 USD), for the company’s collection of location information from their iPhones, the Associated Press reported.

South Korea has location information laws which Apple’s data collection breached. “If the court in the southern city of Changwon rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the total award could come to about 27.6 billion won ($25.7 million). Cupertino, California-based Apple — the most valuable company in the United States — earned $7.31 billion in its fiscal third quarter,” AP noted.

The location data is collected using cellphone towers and Wi-Fi access points near a user’s phone and is stored on the phone. In the US, the “discovery of an unencrypted location file on the iPhone created an uproar among people concerned that their phones could be searched and their location data used against them,” the Wall Street Journal noted.

If Korea is successful no doubt other countries may follow suit.

During the protest period of the 1960s, San Francisco become the center of the Free Speech movement and student activism throughout the United States in the 60s. However, in a decision that contradicted all that the city has come to be known for, the Bay Area Transit Authority shut off the small cell towers inside BART facilities.

The transit system was reacting to a possible threat from protesters. “While the original protests were planned in response to the shootings of Charles Hill and Oscar Grant by transit police, Anonymous also took their anti-BART campaign to real life by organizing more protests against the cell service disruption, starting today at San Francisco’s Civic Center startion at 5pm. This resulted in a sort of dual protest, both for the cell service issue and the deaths,” TechCrunch reported.

The legality of the shutdown has been questioned, but since it was on BART property the company claims it had the right to do it.

That this would occur in San Francisco, not only the cradle of student activism, but also the home of most things digital, seems counter to the city’s culture. Have the conservatives in California become that pervasive? Has the corporate direction of the internet companies – once fledgling start-ups – now hugely successful corporations created a shift in the liberal sensibilities of the area?

Launched in broad beta on Wednesday, closed for inviting Thursday and now spam potential discovered Friday. One has to wonder what else will surface over the weekend. Hey, maybe there will be real fireworks Monday!

Thursday night while playing with Google’s new toy – okay is way more important than that, but to me just another thing to play with – I discovered you could do some serious bulk emailing inside the system.

I wanted to see if my thinking was off so I reached out to Michael Gray, Rae Hoffman and Dave Naylor – we had discovered the flaw in Google’s real time search launch a couple of years ago in Chicago during an SES conference. Dave’s crew must have been on it already as they posted about it later that day.

So what is the problem? Well if you import a large list of contacts in to your Gmail account and then port some to your circle in Plus, any not contacted people can potentially be emailed any time you make a post. See the nice radio button asking you if you are ready to spam below.

“The fact that Google Plus allows non Google Mail accounts to be placed into the contacts list within the site has opened up a huge security issue for email users based on the fact that Google have allowed you to share anything that you wish with huge contact lists, regardless of whether they use Gmail or not,” Alex Graves posted on Dave Naylor’s blog.

Actually it can include any Gmail accounts that have yet to join Google Plus or you may not share a circle with. No doubt this will disappear some time soon. One of the commenters on Dave’s blog asked if it was reported to Google yet, to which Dave replied “I used the form on google+ that count”.

Interestingly, if you are not using Gmail and receive messages from Plus, trying to unsubscribe cannot be done – you get a 404 page at the moment.

It is unfortunate this happened this weekend, no doubt many Google employees are off celebrating the July 4th long weekend. Matt Cutts I am hoping this does not interfer with your celebrations.

As I was dragging and dropping my 400th avatar in to one of my predescribed circles, it dawned on me that Google has created the ultimaate profiling program.

Throughout the 5 days Google Plus has been offered and people have given feedback, one of the most prevalent comments has been the beauty of the cirlces. Facebook groupings are too rigid and limited.

Now that we can drag and drop people in to categories, these circles really become descriptors of any person we drop in to a named circle. Using inclusion in a circle the same way they use a link as a vote for a particular topic, Google now has us helping to better qualify everyone who joins this new service.

As I reported the first day Plus started it broader beta:

“And while many reports have looked at what will be offered, the New York Times went a little deeper in to the reasons for this grab at social. Speaking to its two project managers – Bradley Horowitz and Vic Gundotra – the focus seemed to be about the increased information this project provides to advertisers. Google obviously watched as Facebook struggled at first to find monetization avenues and seem to have that covered:

“Mr. Gundotra and Mr. Horowitz said that knowing more about individual Google users will improve all Google products, including ads, search, YouTube and maps, because Google will learn what people like and eventually be able to personalize those products.”

Distracted by the bells and whistles, the people on day, one who thought Plus may have a hard time countering the established Facebook, are the ones who have spent the long weekend preoccupied using it.

If ‘Do Not Track’ legislation comes in to effect, Google will not have to worry – they can demographically and behaviorally target people from the circles that people create and tag the people they know.

Basically we are profiling every contact for them. Facebook’s Groups and Likes has a much smaller ability to do this. Google no longer needs access to Facebook data – in fact they may be better served developing a relationship with LinkedIn, between the two services they could develop a powerful targeting tool.

We are working for Google to create the ultimate Venn diagrams of the world’s population. Could the
Even if the general public does not jump on to the Plus bandwagon in mass, the information Google is gaining from businesses – marketers, brand socializers and others – will create very granular ‘circles’ for them to sell pinpoint advertising to many industries that already pay for the high priced clicks.

Well done Google, your efforts here are impressive. So when can I start buying advertising to specific circles?

If the headline got you reading this, guess the GoDaddy advertising model works and that may be why it was bought late Friday for $2.25 billion. The world’s largest domain registry was bought by a group of private equity firms.

GoDaddy.com used racy ads during the Superbowl – including ones that were not allowed to run on TV – to brand themselves and become the leading domain seller and website hosting company. They have shown exceptional growth over the past few years, sales rose by 25% to $947 million between 2009 and 2010. 2011 predictions were for sales of well over a billion dollars.

“What these guys see is a company with a lot more potential internationally and more potential to make partnerships and acquisitions,” Bob Parsons, the company’s chief executive and founder, told the LA Times. “They’ll help us finance and they’ll help us recruit talent.”

With the push of local in the search space, many small businesses are now buying domains and creating websites; and this is a global phenomenon.

“The purchase, which includes assumption of the company’s debt, was announced Friday afternoon by Go Daddy and the group of firms, made up of KKR & Co., Silver Lake Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures,” the LA Timnes reported.

The success of the advertising in previous years shows the company had a good read on who was buying domains, with the economy changing one will have to wait and see if that changes or if the company can adjust their message as needed. Either way, stories seem to indicate that the current company employees will be staying on.

UPDATE: Invites are closed – have been since Thursday night – so will wait until they open again and send invites to the people who contacted me.

Okay any readers need an invite to Google+ let me know – though with the widespread nature of the giveaway today I think everyone has one. Just leave your email in the comments and will send you one.

Dorothy, the typical online publisher, sat with her notebook, Chromo, watching the family site disappear from all of the search engine rankings as a tornado of changes pushed and pulled the various SERPs causing traffic to disappear. She had dealt with major algorithm changes in the past, but now there were maps and social media inserts and site previews and multiple listings of branded sites to contend with, and Aunty Em’s online business was dying. Frustrated and exhausted, she fell asleep as the storm swirled around her.

Upon waking she found she was no longer in the safety of the open source, transparent web world. How had she arrived here, in this interactive social realm? And how was she to escape? All around her, there was a buzz and commotion, and as she focused through the noise, Dorothy started to notice the little people surrounding her. “Ding, dong, the Tweet is dead,” they chanted, pointing to the large blue bird crushed by an old desktop computer. “Which old Tweet?” she asked. “The Promoted Tweet,” they replied, “it’s gone where the self promoted tweets all go.”

As Dorothy was taking all this in, she noticed the bird had a book-sized flat object under one wing.

Suddenly, a maroon smoke erupted and a young man towered over the gathered multitude of teen and preteens. “That is my iPad,” he rumbled. “I will have it and all the products the might Apple thinks it controls.”

But before he could grab it, a druid-like figure appeared and dominantly grabbed the item and handed it to Dorothy. “Use this wisely,” Tim Berners-Lee told her. “This and platforms like it represent the future of the web”, he whispered in her ear. “If you are to succeed in your quest you must understand how best to interact with its users.”

The Big Z looked confusedly at the good founder of the web, thinking his ideas were outdated and no longer had a place in this world. But, he was also a little frightened, he did not Like the harsh light of open access. “I will get you my pretty,” he said as he disappeared into his closed off sytem, “and your little notebook too.”

Dorothy did not know what to make of all this, she had never worked with mobile platforms, and had no idea how she would get out of this closed social realm. Looking to the good founder, she asked how was she to get back to her world.

“You must find the Wizard of Search,” she was told, as Tim became fully transparent and vanished.

Turning to the munchkins, Dorothy asked how was she to find the wizard. In a harmonious communal voice they said, “Follow the Local Listings, big brands can’t compete with you if you just follow location listings.”

So Dorothy, turned on her iPad and started a mapping program whose arrows showed the direction of where the Wizard of Search resided. With Chromo looking suspiciously at the iPad now sharing space in his laptop bag, Dorothy set out on her journey.

Not far in to her journey, Dorothy came across a field where she heard a whimper. It was not a dominant voice and at first was hard to find. Eventually she discovered its source hidden among the tall grass. It was a straw dog. One that had, surprisingly, a voice. It was muttering dejectedly, not whimpering as she first thought. “If I only had a brain,” the straw dog lamented.

He jumped when he noticed Dorothy, but could not get far as he was chained and had limited reach. “What do you want,” he asked defensively. “I am Bing, one of the beasts of Redmond. Stand back is the decision you should make,” he quickly added.

Dorothy reached down and unchained Bing, but noticed the Facebook name on a feed bag nearby. “Why are you using Facebook,” she asked.

“Its feed,” Bing replied.

“There is something evil about Facebook,” Dorothy said with a shiver of rememberance of her meeting. “Do you not see that the feed can weaken you. If it shows how it can answer decisions you are needed for, soon they will not come to you.”

“I knew there was something wrong with the feed but I do not have a brain,” Bing explained. “I so need a brain to fully grasp this search thing.”

“Well I am on my way to see the Wizard of Search,” Dorothy informed him. “Perhaps he can help find you a brain.”

“Really!” exclaimed Bing. “I know with a brain I could really be helping others with their decisions. My thinking could be so much more effective, if I could only make better decisions myself.”

I could wile away the hours
conferrin’ with new powers
It would be such new terrain
And my data I’d be sortin’
As my code was busy portin’
If I only had a brain

I’d unravel any riddle
For any individ’le
Nor seen with such disdain

(Dorothy)
With the data you could ogle
You could be another Google
If you only had a brain

(Bing)
Oh, I could tell you why
The ocean’s near the shore
I could search of things I never searched before
And then I’d crawl and search some more

I would not be just a nuffin’
My results all full of stuffin’
My efforts full of pain
I would have an engine mighty
With a search share not so flighty
If I only had a brain

Humming along, the two entered the competitive terrain of shared deals, recommendations and privacy issues.

Soon they saw a large house built with coupons. Outside stood a golden robot frozen in disbelief, perhaps because it was denied entry into the house. Bing seemed a little intimidated by the golden figure, Dorothy noticed.

As she approach it, Dorothy heard a whisper. “Sell me something,” it said. “I need an acquisition.”

Dorothy consulted her iPad and saw that Phonetic Arts was available. When she informed him of this, the robot smiled and quickly grabbed up the speech synthesis firm and now could talk with a deep bold voice. “That is so much better,” it entoned, taking both Bing and Dorothy by surprise.

“What was wrong with you,” th
e diminutive webmaster asked.

“It was the shock of being rebuffed,” the Gbot explained. “My acquisition offers are never turned down. And I need them to continue moving forward. My original product was such a hit, that my ongoing desire for success did not allow my heart to grow.”

“It died a long time ago,” Gbot lamented.

Dorothy told him they were off to see the wizard. “The wonderful Wizard of Search,” she said with a smile.

“I have heard of him,” Gbot said, adding, “would you mind if I came along? He may know how I can get a new heart.”

Bing was sceptical, but Dorothy convinced him this might help everyone.

The three were consulting the iPad for further directions, when Chromo started buzzing. His screen warned of an approaching Carolly lioness.

“Okay, which one of you employees leaked our internal memos?” the purple lioness roared, as she blocked the groups path. “I’ll dropkick to fucking Mars whoever did these leaks,” she growled menacingly.

Seeing Bing hesitate, she sprang at him. “Is that you Arrington? you are involved in a very tiny company. It probably takes a long time to even convince yourself what the hell to do. So fuck off!”

“Move back,” Dorothy said, jumping to Bing’s defense. The lioness cowered away, muttering swaer words as she went.

Dorothy was shocked to hear such things and her stock of the purple lioness dropped dramatically. Bing, on the otherhand, was warming to her and thought a partnership could be made to offset the strong influence of the heartless golden takeover machine.

“I seem to always be too fearful to make bold moves and I operate on the back foot,” she explained retreating from the group as she did. “If only I had some courage, I’m sure the pride would be so much more stable.”

“Join us on our journey and maybe the Wizard can help you,” Bing suggested, not disclosing his intentions of an alliance. And off they set again.

Soon they had arrived at the campus of Stanford. Home of the mysterious Wizard of Search. The lion and Gbot felt comfortable here; it held a certain familiarity. But Bing and Dorothy were uncertain and went along with the suggestion of the other two to visit the MIS department.

Upon entering the right building, all eyes where drawn to the large plasma screen in the common area and the large Orwellian head speaking out to the assembled people. Many were in a line, waiting to ask the head a question.

“Will the algorithm ever be transparent,” was the question being asked by an SEO.

“Not in your life time,” the voice answered with just a wisp of sarcasm, then suddenly turn its head in the direction of the group. “Dorothy and friends, you have arrived finally. I hear you are seeking my help.”

“Yes,” Dorothy replied timidly from the back of the room. “I need to get home and my friends have needs we were hoping you could help them with.”

“I can help you all, but first I need you to do something for me. Bring me the Like Button from Facebook headquarters,” the wizard told them.

The group looked at each other, curiously, fearfully and a little surprised. They did not think they would have to continue their quest. In particular, Dorothy remembered the threats and was more than a little scared. “Is this even possible?” she asked the group and the authoritative display.

“Yes,” he replied. “It is held in a removeable hard drive in their headquarters on the other side of the bay. “The big Z is never certain what elements he will retain in his network, so has made them all detachable. But beware once you have entered the closed system – it knows much more about you than you would think.” And with that the screen went blank and the group was left with their challenge.

“Well this damn adventure has not yet ended,” the purple prosed one swore.

“How can we pull this off?” Dorothy enquired of the group. “How can we distract the millions of minions Facebook has at their command?”

Bing answered that he had made some friends while he was chained in the fields who might be of help. “The Mechanical Turks they called themselves,” he told them. “But I have no idea how we can use them. Individually, they had little power, but as a group they may be a force.”

“I never got the chance to gather enough to help free me,” Bing added.

“Yeah I know those disrupters well,” Gbot said. “They are from all over, come at you from so many angles, it is hard to counter their mischief.”

“Yes they have been mentioned a lot by questioners of the pride,” the lioness noted.

Dorothy smiled as an idea came to her. “I think I have a way we can distract them,” she said. “There are a few flaws in recent additions to Facebook that we could take advantage of,” she pointed out.

So after laying out a plan, the group set off for their destination, as Dorothy typed madly on her iPad and Gbot employed Chromo to help with the efforts.

They had a plan and perhaps it could work, but many people had underestimated Facebook in the past. Starting with the twins and one of his initial partners, many had fallen in to a false sense of security when dealing with the big Z.

The team arrived on the other side of Palo Alto and entered the doors of Facebook. The people, at first seemed preoccupied, mooving about the vast space. But, there was one set of eyes watching them from a cubilce sitting amid so many others like it, eyes that took them in, assessing them all for weakness or vunerablities.

“I figured I would not need the monkeys, you would come willingly,” the voice of Facebook spoke, as people turned to the group now. “So you were the ones who hacked our ‘tag your friends to join a group’ program,” he said in a louder voice.

More people began to take notice of these new faces in their space, while at the same time a new virus attack seems to be starting as the warning tone informed them. One by one they were drawn to their desks inundated with sign-ups and postings to links with malware and flooding members with group autojoins and also hundreds of millions of Likes.

“Seems the monkeys were unemployed,” the lioness answered bravely. The Carollly lioness smiled to see Answers was being used to promote Facebook content too. Meanwhile, the others watched as each assault was dealt with by their assigned programmers and customer reps and security people. It was the security people they really took notice of, and saw where each group would congregate.

There inside each group was the button that maintained its presence in Facebook and its connection to each member who used that specific channel. Dorothy had followed the clever idea of Bing, bringing in the micro distractions to keep the Facebook minions busy and get them to disclose the location of the Like button.

Dorothy, Bing and the lioness gathered in front of the big Z.

“So you have decided to challenge my growing influence. I told you Dorothy that I would get you and your notebook,” Z mocked. “And now I will take that iPad.”

Dorothy placed the iPad in its generic ‘one size fits all tablets’ case and dropped it in to her laptop bag, hiding a knowing smile.

“Apple was clever,” Z explained. “They started their iContent pods as closed loop technology – desktop connections pulling popular data and providing the convenience of portability.”

“But why do you need the iPad,” Dorothy asked.

“It has popular portability and simplicity and allows a deeper link to our platform,” Z continued. “The iPhone was a start and we employed their API to create an easy to use app of our major features. We never would have gotten so viral without it.”

“But now with the wireless access built in to the new version of the iPad we can establish a deeper connection. One that can convince users to go deeper and deeper in to our closed silo of content,” he said laughing.

Z extended his hand beckoning Dorothy to hand over the iPad.

Dorothy reached in to her laptop bag and handed over the generic case, thinking would they be able to go now, quickly.

Z was becoming increasingly focused on the activity around him, but he knew Gbot and Bing were interested in what was happening too. “The little Turks are a nuisance but not serious, they have been on our radar for some time. We will filter them out quick enough.”

Chromo flashed a map back to Stanford and Dorothy discretely nodded to the others, indicating it was time to get out of there.

As the group exited the headquarters, Z looked up, noticing them gone and quickly checked that the case containing the iPad was still on his desk. They can run, he thought, we can get them later and returned to dealing with his other pesks.

Hurriedly they returned to see the Wizard, and raced through the building to find him. The next daily broadcast would start shortly and they wanted to get to him before it started. The team had pulled of their task. Gbot had grabbed the Like button while everyone was busy and Dorothy had used sleight of hand to give Z a Kindle in the same looking case. He would be raging when this was discovered, but hopefully he will be too busy reprogramming a Like option that was not too spammy.

In the corner of the faculty lounge sat a diminutive man hunched over a large laptop. The audio track sounded like the static that opened the Wizard’s messages. The group exchanged looks as they realized this was the actual wizard… the man behind the digital curtain.

“Bill Gross,” Dorothy stated. “You are the wizard?”

“Yes, I have been re-examining the web for years and felt this was a good way to gather the questions and problems its users are having,” he told them.

“But why did you need us to go to Facebook?” the lioness pressed him to answer, “and how is this helping us with what we need?”

“Your journey had not ended until you had conquered the problems of Facebook. Each needed the experience to get what you sought,” Gross told them.

“I see you have returned,” Tim Berners-Lee stated as he entered the room. “Bill perhaps I can let our friends know how they have gained what they needed.”

“Lioness, you have shown courage and the ability to work with others. With these new skills you will be able to better assess what the pride really needs and make the bold moves to grow,” he said. “Bing, your intelligent contributions made success possible. Focused you show the power to overcome your problems and I notice an alliance already forming that could prove a very smart move.”

“Gbot, you may have has the hardest challenge of all. But by concentrating on the task at hand, you completely forgot your need for acquisitions. You showed heart and did not use any ‘evil’ actions to complete the journey,” Tim explained.

“But what about me?” Dorothy asked. “How am I to get home?”

“Dorothy, have always had the ability to go home,” he told her. “You just need to concentrate on your home page. Redirect the distractions and tap the iPad. Reload the homepage is all that was required,” he replied.

“Dorothy stay with us,” Bing pleaded. “There is so much you can show us. The user experience is as mysterious to us, as the algorithm is to you.”

“No I need to get back. Aunty Em and the others need me; they are not tech savvy and have been distracted trying to monetize social media. I must let them know we have to concentrate on what I have seen works,” Dorothy told him.

“That is why we wanted the Like button. We know they will replace it, but even a small break may show how really distracting and dangerous it is to a free web,” the wizard added.

“I will leave this device for you to deal with,” Dorothy said, as she placed it on the table and tapped it twice.

Stepping back, she said “reload the homepage, redirect the homepage, the domain is the homepage,” and suddenly she was no longer there.

Dorothy woke to find that she had fallen asleep over the keyboard of her MacPro, with her new Crome netbook open beside it.

“Now that was a dream,” she smiled.

So was doing some work online and the football ended and 60 Minutes began in the background. Was going to change the channel but they did a promo of changes coming the next day at Facebook. There was Mark Zuckerberg talking about Facebook’s new profile page features – okay no big deal – give me more info.

I saw the movie and agree with Lesley Stahl – that he is not quite the same as his character. I will always now think he looks like Jesse Eisenberg.

The changes aim “to transform what’s now a jumbled collection of details into a streamlined window into who you are and what you’re up to. A new “bio” space at the top offers a quick overview, and a more-prominent photo section spotlights images you’ve recently posted and photos of you tagged by your friends.

Another new feature pulls up a history of your relationship with any of your Facebook friends, showing details like comments you’ve exchanged and events you’ve attended together. It’s an expansion of a feature Facebook launched in late October,” CNN Money reported.

The Winkelvoss twins should stop doing press – guys you never come off in a good light. Very petty – $65 million supposed settlement and you want more – as Kara Swisher notes “I don’t feel sympathetic to the twins” – her writing at AllThingsD are a must read for those in the online industry.

The movie very cleverly promotes itself right after the story – a new ad that does not try the happy music social one done before its initial release.

Facebook is here to stay though Andy Rooney has yet to join – his eyebrows have a fan page!

Okay I now get it. This could be a game changer – and it’s a clever video!

Facebook Messages

Copyright infringement and fair use, the Communication Decency Act, defamation, privacy and anonymity are just a few of the issues all online publishers must be aware of, because as the saying goes, “ignorance is no protection against the law.’

Everyone should be aware that scrapping content from someone else’s website is illegal – it is not ‘black hat’ it is illegal.  But unless you are Righthaven LLC which has been involved in 173 lawsuits and received an estimated $255,500 in settlements, according to RightHavenLawsuits.com. Most of the suits involved copyright infringement of stories from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the list of the defendants is impressive including NORML (National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws) and the Nevada Democratic Party – both of whom settled.

Righthaven has been called ‘parasitic bottom feeder‘ and ‘copyright enforcer‘, but it is their excess that has the Electronic Frontier Foundation offering to help Righthaven defendants.

“Righthaven, founded in March of 2010, files hundreds of copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of newspaper publishers against bloggers who make use of news content without permission. To that end, Righthaven searches the internet for stories and parts of stories from the newspapers that they represent. Once they find content that has been re-published, Righthaven purchases the copyright to the article and sues the owner of the blog,” EFF announced.

Those three sentences would possibly have me in the Righthaven net if EFF was a client. And that is where the battle lines are drawn. The defense is not against site scrappers, but what is termed “fair use.” Without fair use many news stories would not get written and the traffic to the originating publishers would be greatly diminished. The newspaper industry is having major problems dealing with the free nature of the web which is another story – but the have complained about their content being used beyond what would be considered ‘fair use.”

“The doctrine of fair use developed over the years as courts tried to balance the rights of copyright owners with society’s interest in allowing copying in certain, limited circumstances. This doctrine has at its core a fundamental belief that not all copying should be banned, particularly in socially important endeavors such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research,” Bitlaw.com explains.

In one of Righthaven’s suits the defendant used 5 sentences in a news report – that one was dismissed, .  Interestingly, there is also a case Righthaven requested the court to drop, after the EFF served Righthaven with a “with an answer and counter claim saying the post at issue was protected by the fair use doctrine of copyright law and accusing the Review-Journal and Righthaven of abusing copyright law by trying to intimidate defendants into settling what critics call frivolous, no-warning lawsuits,” the Las Vegas Sun reported.  There was the possibility if Righthaven lost the suit they could have been liable for the EFF attorney fees.

The suits issued were generally for $150,000 and the handing over of the offending domains. Given many of the defendants were small companies or individuals settlements were worked out for between $2,000 to $5,000.

Those tactics sound a little familiar? Let’s discuss the Communication Decency Act and that scourge of the search results Ripoff Report. The CDA was started in an effort to fight online pornography and children’s access to indecent content. Howver, freedom of speech advocates fought some of it and the act was changed dramatically.

But it did have Section 230 added to the original act which included “protection for online service providers and users from actions against them based on the content of third parties, stating in part that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider,” Wikipedia notes.

It was this addition that allowed Ripoff Report to keep content submitted by anonymous posters that falsely criticized and defamed businesses and individuals. Google ranked some of these very high in their rankings and created a situation where the businesses and individuals were hurt financially.

“Ripoff Report is a website that allows users to post reports about individuals and companies that they believe have “ripped them off” or treated them unfairly.  The website has attracted much criticism and litigation for refusing to remove allegedly false reports and offering a service to aggrieved businesses called the “Corporate Advocacy Program” (“CAP”), under which, for a fee, the website will investigate “rip-off” reports targeting member companies and post prominent rebuttals to those reports” the Citizen Media Law Project stated.

If this content were to be edited then the website would lose the coverage of the CDA, as they would have been involved in the selection of the material published. There is no denying an online consumer watch dog is needed, but the use of a law to take money to counter false statements is an issue that the government needs to address.

A suit was brought against Yelp – the online review site, for their employees asking for monthly payments to remove bad reviews. “The suit hinges on the question of whether Yelp is simply offering to run a positive advertisement above negative reviews, or whether it is further offering to remove negative reviews for cash, which could in court amount to payoffs to prevent the site from doing future harm – a.k.a. extortion” Inc. Magazine stated.

So online publishers beware. If you allow third party comments, you cannot edit them if you want to be covered under the CDA for any defamatory comments.

Privacy is another issue publishers should know something about. Even Google has been forced to provide information of users who “posted denigrating comments and unauthorized videos” on YouTube, the Associated Press reported. When they are done anonymously there may be problems and your hosting company may have to help, but remember ignorance is no excuse.

As Richard Bernstein of the New York Times notes: “Anonymous sources are of course among the newspaper reporter’s best friends, without whom the cause of informing the public would be severely set back. But anonymity is also a tremendous aid to the resentful, the scandalous and the cowardly, and the signs are that the tidal of wave of anonymous comment made possible by the Internet is getting even bigger”.

The Online Media Legal Network held the conference – Journalism’s Digital Transition: Unique Legal Challenges and Opportunities – earlier this year and are sharing the videos from the various sessions. I strongly recommend online publishers taking the time to watch them. May take some time as they are not 30 minute sessions, but work your way through them.

The OMLN also offers free legal assistance to online publishers so it may be a site you want to bookmark just in case.