The Story of Dealing With 33 Attorneys General 172
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.'"
Re:Irony (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Irony (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Today's reality (Score:3, Interesting)
Being a minority is not a requirement to be a victim of a civil rights violation, violent crime, or hate crime. A black man being attacked by the KKK because he is black is just as much a victim as a white man being attacked by the Black Panthers because he's white. It doesn't matter if the victim is in a majority or minority, it's based on if the crime is based on race, religion, gender, orientation, etc. It just happens that minorities are more often the victims then those in the majority.
Re:Today's reality (Score:3, Interesting)
In the US, there is no hate speech laws, the 1st amendment of the US constitution broadly prohibits regulation of the content of speech.
It's called "hate crime" not "hate speech". And yes something you say can be counted as a "hate crime". (...) So if you combine all these, you end up with intimidation being a severely punishable offence if the person is a minority. Since 'intimidation' is extremely vague the law can punish you for libel or slander if it is 'intimidating' in nature. Bye freedom of speech.
Hypothetical mob: "This place ain't for the likes of you, get the fuck out of here before we beat the crap out of you. If you or any of your n*gger friends ever show their ugly face here again you're dead meat. I'll give you to the count of ten. One. Two. Three..."
Not all speech is protected, death threats are not. Combine that with hate directed at a minority you've got a pretty clear case of hate crime if you ask me. "Intimidation" is not a general insult, it's a threat of harm and I can't really imagine the courts having much trouble telling those apart.
Re:Irony (Score:4, Interesting)
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".
More corruption (Score:1, Interesting)
From the article: "Too often, we've found, the office of attorney general is used for little more than a way to advance one's political career."
"Taking complaints from your citizenry and turning them into political capital is simply too good an opportunity for these guys to pass up."
"Unlike most other people in business who will attempt to reach out to you to get what they want, and use the threat of going public as a tool, our experience is that the offices of the Attorneys' General seem to be most happy communicating via press conference, without any sort of preliminaries. This is primarily a political exercise, and you're dealing with people who are very empowered to make life difficult for you."
"At no time during this process were we accused of breaking any laws."
"...an AG essentially is a state run law firm employing hundreds of people."
The political system in the U.S. is extremely corrupt.
Re:The answer is already here. (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you can choose not to have contacts with those states. New York isn't forcing you to sell your products to residents of New York.
If you have contacts with a forum state, you're subject to that state's jurisdiction in matters related to those contacts.
We care about hypocrisy and conflicts of interest (Score:4, Interesting)
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?