Techdirt. Stories filed under "grandstanding"

FTC Still Seems More Interested In Making Headlines Than Really Protecting Privacy

Mike Masnick — Fri, 1 Feb 2013 16:22:31 PST

So, the FTC got some press today for announcing a high profile "settlement" with social networking startup Path. You might think that this is entirely about the news that came out a year ago, about Path uploading entire user address books to its server. If you don't recall, that story got a lot of press coverage. Basically, Path, like tons of social networks and mobile apps, had a feature which was "see if your existing friends already use this app and connect to them." But, to do that, it needed to know who your friends are. The process it used to do this was to upload your address book in the background and then compare it to their user base. This was, certainly, a somewhat questionable practice on privacy grounds, but it was something that lots of companies did, because it was a simple way to use the "find your friends" feature.

Of course, as soon as the story about Path went viral, most companies who were doing this very, very quickly dropped the practice, and figured out other, less privacy-invasive ways to connect you to your friends. That's a good thing. So, does the company need to be punished? It seems like negative publicity and the market took care of everything.

Well... if you look at the details of the Path "settlement," it wasn't even really about that issue at all. Yes, Path agreed to have outside privacy audits for the next 20 years (which is the FTC's go to "punishment" plan), but the hyped up $800,000 payment actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the uploading address books. Instead, it dealt with a different issue. During the investigation, the FTC also found that Path likely violated COPPA, the silly and misguided law that basically means most sites put in their terms that they don't allow anyone under 13 to use it. Of course, in practice this has significant unintended consequences, including not letting perfectly reasonable services be available to kids and (more likely) parents teaching their kids to lie about their age.

It turned out that for a brief period of time, Path did not exactly follow the COPPA rules, and actually let a few thousand kids under the age of 13 sign up. So, they may have violated the rule. But... Path had discovered and fixed this well before the FTC investigation began. The company claims it was just an oversight that their system did not automatically reject users under the age of 13.

So... the company made a mistake, caught it and fixed it, without having the FTC get involved at all. And there's no evidence, at all, that it misused the data it collected here. And yet it needs to pay $800,000? Why? For a big company, $800,000 may be small beans, but for a startup, that's significant money.

Oh, and even more bizarre: as noted earlier, lots of companies did similar things to Path, but the FTC only went after Path. When asked why they only went after Path, outgoing FTC boss Jon Leibowitz gave a non-answer, saying that they're just a small agency and so they have to "pick and choose which malefactors you want to go after." So they chose the one most likely to create headlines -- and forced them to cough up $800,000 over a "violation" that was the result of an accident, which the company had already discovered and fixed, and for which no abuse was found. That doesn't seem like good policy. It seems like vindictive choices by the FTC focused on the maximum potential to create headlines, rather than actually protect people's privacy.

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Another Politician Boards The Bandwagon: Sen. Rockefeller Blames Violent Games And Television For Newtown Tragedy

Tim Cushing — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:48:00 PST

As Mike covered earlier, politicians are particularly opportunistic beasts, willing to turn any tragedy into a soapbox and a chance to push through pet legislation. Even if the politicians aren't particularly wed to gun control or censorship, they're more than willing to get on the bandwagon if it will net them a little facetime with the press or the appearance of "doing something."

The latest addition to the list of opportunists is Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who states that something needs to be done about violent video games and movies, whether or not they had anything to do with last week's tragedy.

“We also need to look at the violence our kids see every day starting at a young age. By the time children reach 18 years old, they have seen tens of thousands of violent images – on television, the internet, or video games. As parents, research confirms what we already know – these violent images have a negative impact on our children’s wellbeing. While we don’t know if such images impacted the killer in Newtown, the issue of violent content is serious and must be addressed.

Rockefeller doesn't specify any particular research, but then, this is a press release, not an editorial. And despite admitting that everything he's worried about may not have affected the Newtown killer, something must still be done because... well, because this is Rockefeller's pet issue.

Back in 2007, Rockefeller led a push to grant the FCC "explicit authority" over violent and indecent programming, including the assessment of heftier fines for violators. Back then, he used his "tens of thousands of violent images" scare quote as well, and mentioned a wealth of research that backed up his assertions... but failed to name a single study in his press release.

Having failed with this initial push, Rockefeller saddled up the hobby horse again in 2009, revisiting the Children's Television Act. He claimed this was just a fact-finding mission and not another attempt to push the FCC to clean up television to his exacting specifications. One is almost tempted to believe him, right up until he details his frustration with the reactions of his fellow senators to his FCC-related effort.

He said he had not been deterred by the reactions of his fellow Senators to a hearing last year at which he featured a clip reel of violent programming. He said he was shot down, mostly by members of his own party, because of concerns over the First Amendment. "There was an automatic mindset that because the First Amendment exists, you cannot even be talking about this so don't waste my time. I was furious, and I was undeterred."

As everyone knows, the First Amendment only protects speech you 100% approve of.* How dare these so-called Senators express concerns about turning the FCC into a tool of censorship! It's refreshing that Rockefeller remains "undeterred" in his efforts to sacrifice the First Amendment on the altar of "protecting the children."

*100% not a fact.

He's a few years behind his biannual schedule, but Rockefeller is riding high in the hobby horse saddle yet again, thanks to America's rather more frequent delivery of exploitable tragedies. He may have made a few points on gun control and mental health in this release, but he undoes any forward momentum by opportunistically exhuming his "violent media" platform.

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What Do Sandy & Pearl Harbor Have In Common? Politicians Exploit Both To Push Cybersecurity Agendas

Mike Masnick — Thu, 1 Nov 2012 13:59:00 PDT

Defense Department boss Leon Panetta has been recycling his cyber Pearl Harbor ghost stories for a few years now to push for expansive cybersecurity legislation (i.e. budget and power to spy on people), but Pearl Harbor is a bit outdated these days. So why not shoot for a more contemporary reference? Why not something in the "now"? Well, Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano (who's in a bit of a turf war with Panetta over who gets control -- again, budget and power to spy on people -- of "cybersecurity") has decided to go with the most contemporary possible reference: Hurricane Sandy. Apparently, to Napolitano, the answer to the question of "how soon is it appropriate to cynically abuse the story of Hurricane Sandy for political gain?" is "right away."

Napolitano, who, you may remember, doesn't know how the internet works, went to a cybersecurity event on Wednesday to warn that without cybersecurity legislation, an attack might be just as bad as Hurricane Sandy. Quoting a report from Hillicon Valley:

After Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the East Coast, Napolitano said people should look than no further than the damage caused by the massive storm to understand the need to boost the nation's cybersecurity protections.

"One of the possible areas of attack, of course, is attacks on our nation's control systems — the control systems the operate our utilities, our water plants, our pipelines, our financial institutions," Napolitano said. "If you think that a critical systems attack that takes down a utility even for a few hours is not serious, just look at what is happening now that Mother Nature has taken out those utilities."

"The urgency and the immediacy of the cyber problem; the cyberattacks that we are undergoing and continuing to undergo can not be overestimated," she said.

I'd say that it's not so much the utility downtime that's been the problem with Hurricane Sandy compared to, say, the wind and the copious amounts of water falling from the sky and piling up on the ground. Last I checked, that can't be controlled via a computer (leaving wacky conspiracy theories aside).

As per usual, when it comes to cybersecurity threats, Napolitano (like pretty much every single other politician pushing for legislation) refused to get into specifics about how real any threat is -- other than to make scary "be afraid, be very afraid!" noises. The one time she was asked about a specific threat, she immediately went vague, but in full-on FUD mode:

When asked by Post editor Mary Jordan about whether hackers are stealing information or money from banks, Napolitano answered "yes" and then quickly added, "I really don't want to go into that per se."

"All I want to say is that there are active matters going on with financial institutions," she said.

Is it really so crazy to think that if the government is going to pass a bill that has broad implications for our privacy, they should at least come up with a legitimate and clear explanation for why it's needed? Instead they toss out scare stories about hackers stealing money, planes falling from skies and utilities shutting down -- without any proof that any of it is actually likely or possible.

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Demolishing The Reasoning Behind Senators Bogus Grandstanding Against Google

Mike Masnick — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:24:00 PST

I have no problem calling out Google when I think the company does questionable things, but I'm really at a complete loss over the desire of some in DC to attack the company these days. The best I can figure it out, they don't like the fact that Google is successful. Back in September there were those bizarrely clueless hearings against Google, which displayed (yet again) a technically clueless Congress wanting to "do something" about a situation they clearly didn't understand.

It appears that we're starting to see the next step in this charade as Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee are calling for an antitrust investigation by the FTC. Of course, we're pretty sure the FTC has been investigating Google for antitrust issues for a while now, so it seems a bit strange to send this letter (embedded below) now.

The letter is really quite ridiculous, and demonstrates the insanity of DC these days, where the highly misleading to downright bogus claims by lobbyists for one side are quoted by politicians as fact, with no admission where the numbers come from. Thankfully, the folks at TechFreedom wasted little time in writing what seems like the definitive response to Senators Kohl and Lee. You really should read the whole thing, but just a snippet:

To begin with, the letter asserts that "Google faces competition from only one general search engine, Bing," suggesting that only Bing (and it, only ineffectively) could keep Google in check. In essence, the Senators are prejudging an essential question on which any case against Google would turn: market definition. But why would the market not include other tools for information retrieval? Is it not at least worth mentioning that more and more Internet users are finding information and spending time on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, while more and more advertisers are spending their money on these Google competitors? Isn't it clear that search itself is evolving from "ten blue links" into something more social, multi-faceted and interactive?

In a remarkable leap, the senators then identify the specific alleged abuse that Google’s alleged market power leads to: search bias. That's remarkable because, other than the breathless claims of disgruntled competitors (given plenty of air time at the September hearing), there is actually no evidence that search bias is, in fact, harmful to consumers—which is what antitrust is concerned with. (Read both sides of this debate in TechFreedom's free ebook, The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet.)

As our colleague, Josh Wright, has thoroughly demonstrated, this "own-content" bias is actually an infrequent phenomenon and is simply not consistent with an actionable claim of anticompetitive foreclosure. Moreover, among search engines, Google references its own content far less frequently than does Bing (which favors Microsoft content in the first search result when no other search engine does so more than twice as often as Google favors its own content).

Making matters even more ridiculous is that the Senators parrot the claims of Google competitors/companies, who seem to just be jealous of Google, without questioning the sources. Thankfully, TechFreedom is around to step up and help provide some context and debunk some of the more ridiculous claims:

The letter also reports, again with no caveats, claims by the CEOs of Yelp! and Nextag that "75 percent of Yelp!'s web traffic consists of consumers who find its website as a result of Google searches, and . . . 65 percent of Nextag's traffic originates from Google searches," and that losing this much traffic to Google preferencing its own content would be catastrophic. But the letter fails to mention that most searches for brand names on Google are "navigational" rather than "informational." As Google competitor Expedia’s CEO recently explained:
The majority of, at least Expedia’s, and I believe Hotel.com’s traffic that comes from search to our site actually come through people searching for Expedia, for example. So in typing in Expedia in Google or so on, typing in Hotels.com in Google. So of the 25% for Expedia, for example, the majority of that traffic is someone who’s already looking for Expedia, and that person is going to find Expedia one way or the other because they are searching for something very specific. (Expedia earnings call, 10/28/10, quoted here).
Indeed, a recently published independent academic study conducted across search engines concluded that 52% of "business queries" (and 72% of organizational queries) were navigational. In other words, most of the Google traffic going to these sites was likely from users who simply typed in "Yelp" or "NextTag" as a convenient way of getting to those sites. Such searches are not diverted (and not even claimed to be diverted) to Google’s own sites, and the first search result for the search term “Expedia” will always be expedia.com. Thus, the majority of these searches that are claimed to make up 75% and 65% of the complaining companies’ traffic is not in any way threatened by Google’s business model, and is completely irrelevant to assessing the effect of Google preferencing its own content.

Furthermore, the letter does not mention Yelp's recent boast that over 40% (and growing) of its searches are now conducted on its mobile app—insulating it from whatever "power" Google might exercise over traditional searches.

Oops. If this were an honest debate about Google's practices, you'd think that the Senators would have been at least a little skeptical of such easily debunked claims by these companies. Unfortunately, in the world of politics today, that's not how things work. Actually looking at facts or understanding what they're trying to regulate is ignored in favor of going after targets that generate headlines.

And, of course, if you're looking for a thorough, detailed and devastating response to any time anyone grandstands about search engines without understanding any of the details, you should always go to the master on the subject, Danny Sullivan, who writes, Dear Congress, It's Not Ok Not To Know How Search Engines Work, Either, picking up on last week's meme about SOPA. Sullivan notes that the letter from Kohl and Lee is "jaw-dropping," not just in how one-sided it is, but in how superficial it is. Again, you should read the entire thing to get tidbits about how the letter seems to not even know what guidelines the FTC has already put out, and about how the Senators (rather shockingly) blatantly misquote Google VP Marissa Mayer and don't even understand what she's saying. But there's also this section, where it appears the Senators have simply no idea about the relationship of Microsoft and Yahoo and what it means relative to Google:

Bing: A Microsoft & Yahoo Production?
What really set off my alarm bells was this:

Bing, a partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo

Despite substantial amounts of staff time and money spent to have the hearings, the committee mistakenly believes that Microsoft’s Bing search engine is a Yahoo and Microsoft production.

It’s not. Bing is a wholly-owned part of Microsoft. Yahoo has no ownership in Bing.

But wait. Isn’t there a partnership? Yes, but one that gives Yahoo a minor role handling Bing’s ad sales to “high volume” advertisers. The deal came after Bing was launched. It wasn’t an essential part of it, nor does it help with Bing building consumer market share against Google.

If the committee fully understood the competitive space, they’ve have said instead:

Yahoo Search, a partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo

That would be far more accurate. That’s because Yahoo no longer has its own core search technology, nor its own search ad serving technology. It gave all these up to partner with Microsoft (it would have kept them in a deal with Google. See our side-by-side comparison).

Heck, Yahoo’s former CEO Carol Bartz was quite specific that her goal was to use Bing’s technology as a way to somehow beat Bing at its own game. Bing wasn’t a partnership to her; it was the competition.
Bing & Yahoo Distant To Google?
Perhaps the committee thought that the “partnership” was the overall “search alliance” between Bing and Yahoo? If that was the case, then why did the letter go on to say

…which is a distant second in market share and is losing an estimated $2 billion annually…

Those stats only make sense if you’re talking about Bing itself, having a 15% share to Google’s 65% in the United States, as recently reported. If you’re talking about Bing and Yahoo combined, they come up to 30%, much healther competition.

It's really quite amazing that Congress can get away with such blatantly dishonest grandstanding -- but, on tech issues, Congress still seems to think that its own blissful ignorance is a plus when it comes to regulating. For those of us who live in this world, that's pretty damn scary.

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Apple Caves In, Bans DUI Checkpoint Apps For No Good Reason

Mike Masnick — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:37:00 PDT

We've noted that a bunch of senators were on a silly and uninformed grandstanding mission against various apps for the iPhone and Android phones that alert people to the locations of various police DUI checkpoints. Of course, all the grandstanding really did was to massively pump up the sales of those apps. However, it looks like Apple has caved in and banned such apps from the iOS app store. Nick Gillespie does a good job explaining why this doesn't make much sense. First he points out that most of the data for these apps is crowdsourced, meaning that the app maker really shouldn't have any responsibility or liability here, but even more to the point, he notes that (as we pointed out originally) police themselves regularly make this info available as a deterrent:

Some police departments actually supply the data used in such apps because they reduce the number of drunk drivers on the roads! Somehow, I'm thinking that Steve Jobs circa 1984 (both the year and the ad) would have told U.S. senators sending threatening letters about computer-based info sharing to take a hike. Or at least to spend time on, I don't know, creating a freaking budget for the country rather than worrying about regulating something that helps reduce impaired driving.

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Lawsuits And Laws On The Way In Response To Sony Data Breach

Mike Masnick — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 06:02:49 PDT

With Sony admitting that its PlayStation Network was hacked and that lots of personal info was accessed, you knew the reaction would be swift. Within a day we have class action lawsuits being filed and new laws being proposed. I agree that it was monumentally stupid of Sony to store passwords as plaintext rather than as hashes, which certainly leaves room for negligence claims, but will laws really make a difference? About the only reasonable response from a government official has been White House cyber boss Howard Schmidt (who has a history of being more reasonable than many of his colleagues), who noted that getting hacked is a risk of doing business, and it's not worth overreacting to Sony's situation:

"It's still a situation where specific incidents make it something it's not," he said. "Things make headlines that are just the risk of doing business in many cases."

But, of course that won't satisfy the class action lawyers or the politicians who are all over this. Beyond the plans to introduce laws, we've already seen that Senator Richard Blumenthal, who was a massive grandstander as Connecticut Attorney General, has continued his grandstanding ways with a public "demand for answers" from Sony.

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Prostitutes Have Just Moved From Craigslist To Facebook

Mike Masnick — Wed, 9 Feb 2011 10:02:07 PST

When Craigslist -- under a peer pressure campaign from grandstanding state attorneys general and some misguided activists groups -- shut down its adult services section, it wasn't difficult to predict that this would do little to nothing to actually slow down or prevent prostitution. Instead, it would just drive those activities to other sites, and those sites might not work quite as closely with law enforcement as Craigslist did. In fact, we noted that Craigslist was a very useful tool for law enforcement to actually track down and crack prostitution rings.

Anyway, as expected, it appears that the activity hasn't gone away, it's just moved elsewhere. News.com highlights how it appears that Facebook has become the site of choice for prostitutes, picking up on a small bit of some new research on prostitution by Sudhir Venkatesh. The report suggested that Facebook had already been growing as a tool for prostitutes, but the exodus from Craigslist may have just sped that whole process up a bit.

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Canadian Politicians Jump On The 'Censor Craigslist' Bandwagon

Mike Masnick — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 01:23:52 PDT

Thought we were done with the silly political grandstanding against Craigslist, which won't stop child trafficking, but will actually help the scumbags who are involved in the practice? No such luck. Apparently politicians in other countries have seen how politically successful such grandstanding is, and are using the same tactics against Craigslist. Some Ontario politicians are now demanding that Craigslist takedown its adult section in Canada (Craigslist only self-censored the section in the US). Of course, as in the US, this won't help law enforcement stop prostitution and child trafficking. It will only serve to drive it further underground and make it harder to track and stop. But I'm sure it makes for good-looking headlines, even if it makes the problem worse.

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Backpage Tells Attorneys General That They Won't Give In To Censorship Demand

Mike Masnick — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 08:25:04 PDT

On Tuesday, we wrote about how a group of grandstanding state attorneys general had moved on from blaming Craigslist for the actions of its users, now that they had successfully censored that site, and began demanding similar censorship for Backpage.com, the online classifieds from Village Voice Media. As a few people have sent in, Backpage does not seem interested in backing down, posting a public response and pointing out that they are operating perfectly in accordance with the law, that even the AGs admit that Backpage cooperates with law enforcement, and that the AGs would be better served going after those actually involved in the activities, rather than blaming third parties:

While no system is perfect, even the AGs acknowledge Backpage.com's good-faith cooperation with law enforcement.

In the last two years, Backpage.com users have posted 58 million ads and only 6 million in the adult services section. Federal and state authorities have called on Backpage.com to testify in just five cases involving alleged abuse of underage persons. Backpage.com continues to respond to valid subpoenas from law enforcement officials whose job it is to investigate, apprehend and prosecute criminals who wrongfully post illegal ads and victimize others.

Backpage.com is disappointed that the AGs have determined to shift blame from criminal predators to a legal business operator in an apparent attempt to capitalize on political opportunity during the election season.

They also note: "Censorship will not create public safety nor will it rid the world of exploitation."

Of course, rather than recognizing any of this and maybe backing down, Connecticut Attorney General (and Senate candidate) Richard Blumenthal responded in typically misleading fashion:

"I am deeply disappointed by this unfortunate and unfounded resistance to taking common-sense steps toward protecting women and children. I am hopeful that the company will reconsider its resistance and do the right thing. I will consult with my fellow attorneys general and consider possible next steps."

Notice that he does not respond to any of the actual points raised. He does not respond to the fact that shutting down these services won't do anything to help protect women and children and will almost certainly make the problem worse. He just pretends that the world is the exact opposite of what it is. It's as if Richard Blumenthal thinks that everyone out there is incredibly dumb and believes the world works as he says it does, rather than how it actually works.

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State AGs Now Targeting Backpage After Forcing Craigslist To Stop Helping Them Pursue Lawbreakers

Mike Masnick — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:42:00 PDT

We've already explain how the political grandstanding campaign against Craigslist, that got the company to shut down its "adult services" section based on no legal reason, does plenty to harm the people the various state attorneys general think they're "helping." Craigslist has been highly active in working with police to use the site to find and arrest those actually responsible for dangerous exploitation of children. But by shutting off that tool, the ads simply migrate to sites that are more underground and less willing to work with law enforcement. Apparently, though, the AGs are stuck on the political headlines, and don't care at all for anyone's actual safety.

So they've moved on to their next target: 21 state attorneys general have kicked off a grandstanding campaign against Backpage, the online classifieds arm of Village Voice Media (the same company that was just sued over the same issue). Once again, Backpage is one of the companies that has worked closely with law enforcement -- and the AGs even admit that in their announcement demanding the company shut down the tool.

This is incredibly dumb and frustrating. In the pursuit of headlines falsely claiming that they're "protecting" children, these AGs are only serving to attack the companies who help them track down those actually responsible for child exploitation and child prostitution. All they're doing is making the problem worse. Those who are exploiting these kids in the worst possible way won't stop doing it -- they'll just use other means to do so, in a way that's harder for police to track them down and to capture them.

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Sad: Why Haven't Other Internet Companies Stood Up For Craigslist Against AGs?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:50:48 PDT

For quite some time now, we've been covering how various state attorneys general have been publicly grandstanding and threatening Craigslist, despite no actual legal basis. That grandstanding, of course, has "worked." It's resulted in Craigslist settling twice, and now shutting down the adult services section, leading those ads to migrate elsewhere actually helping those responsible, and making it harder for law enforcement to do its job. In testimony to Congress, Craigslist is pointing out that many of those other sites are not nearly as willing to help law enforcement.

But there's another issue here. As Ryan Singel points out, this grandstanding campaign is really an attack on the rather important Section 230 safe harbors for online service providers. Richard Blumenthal, who has led the attack, despite a lack of jurisdiction or legal basis is currently running for Senate, and apparently is interested in changing Section 230. Singel asked Blumenthal first under what legal theory Craigslist was liable, and got back vague claims of how its failure to enforce its terms of service violated Connecticut consumer protection laws -- an incredibly weak claim unlikely to stand up to any scrutiny. But, more seriously, Singel asked about Section 230, and Blumenthal said the law "is outdated and needs revision."

"I support changes clarifying and strengthening the law to hold websites accountable when they knowingly enable or promote illegal activity."

Beware that "enable." Blumenthal wants to expand massive liability to internet services in a manner that would kill off significant innovation. Could you enable illegal activity via Google, Facebook, Twitter, Skype or many other popular internet services? You bet. Section 230 is designed to make sure the liability actually went to those responsible, not to the service providers and tools they used. Changing that is incredibly dangerous for innovation.

And, yet, as Single points out, these other companies haven't stepped up to support Craigslist in the grandstanding against them. Of course, the PR reasons are clear: no one wants to be in a position where critics could twist their words and misleadingly and falsely claim they "support" exploitation. But this is a big deal and in keeping quiet, bad things may happen:

The logical extension of what Blumenthal & Co say they want is a world where even they couldn't use Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to connect with their constituents, for fear that one of them (or their political enemies) would plant incriminating material they could then be sued over.

And even if they were successful, and didn't care about that consequences, would ads for prostitution disappear from the face of the earth? Not likely. The same ads that Craigslist is pilloried for dominate the back pages of alternative weeklies. The printed Yellow Pages carries ads for "Escort Services." You can find them in the Village Voice-owned Backpages.com. And beyond the media world, it's not very hard to find "Massage" parlors in any major U.S. city, where I'd venture to guess, you are more likely to find human-trafficking than you were anywhere on Craigslist. And back in the relative shadows from whence they came would only exploiters of women and children would only have more power.

The collateral damage of a wrong-headed pursuit Craigslist is an assault on the open internet itself.

Singel also points out, as we have in the past, that the key point of grandstanding these days is on the revenue Craigslist made from these ads -- something that only started when these very same AGs forced Craigslist to start charging for the ads as part of an earlier settlement.

Singel wants to know why other internet companies aren't speaking up. Because the end result of letting Craigslist hang on its own on this topic is going to come back to haunt them. Already, in the same Congressional hearings today where Craigslist was attacked, those who pushed this damaging situation on the company are sharpening their knives for other internet companies:

"Every pimp has a MySpace page," Frundt testified, adding that ads also show up on Backpages.com. "Every john uses a john board and posts information on where to buy children."

"This has been going on for many years. We must do something about our children being sold on the internet."

Indeed! We absolutely must do something -- but the something we should do is use these tools to go after and stop those actually responsible rather than pushing them around the internet, and blaming the tools they use. That doesn't stop the activity. It doesn't protect the exploited. It doesn't help the situation. It creates a false target, and a situation in which the very principles on which the internet has been built get undermined, at a potentially huge cost to innovation, communication and free speech.

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Groups Still Slamming Craigslist

Mike Masnick — Wed, 8 Sep 2010 07:29:23 PDT

Even with Craigslist censoring itself due to ridiculous public pressure, and even though it's pretty clear that this action will only make things much worse for victims, the so-called "public interest groups" that pushed this misguided media campaign against Craigslist still don't think they've done enough damage. They sent me press releases three times yesterday patting themselves on the back for Craigslist censoring itself and then demanding that it do even more. This is unfortunate, no matter how you look at it. These groups can't seem to admit that blaming the tool rather than the actual people involved only makes the problem worse. Their inability to recognize the basic consequences of moving this activity to other forums that don't cooperate with law enforcement and make it much harder to stop these activities is really quite upsetting. Blaming the tool providers for the actions of users doesn't stop the actions, at all. It just makes it that much harder to do anything. People patting themselves on the back for getting Craigslist to censor itself are worsening the problem they think they're solving.

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Finally: People Speaking Up About How Censoring Craigslist Helps 'Pimps, Child Traffickers & Other Abusive Scumbags'

Mike Masnick — Tue, 7 Sep 2010 10:12:35 PDT

We've been saying for years that the political granstanding efforts against Craigslist do the exact opposite of their intended purpose. They certainly don't stop prostitution or child trafficking. They just drive it further underground. Craigslist has become a very useful tool for monitoring, tracking and cracking down on such illegal activities. However, every time I mention it, some people get upset that I "just don't understand" the horrors of child trafficking etc. Well, it's true that I certainly have no experience with it, but I don't think that changes my analysis of the situation... and it appears that others are starting to notice as well. Danah Boyd has written an excellent article explaining in direct terms "how censoring Craigslist helps pimps, child traffickers and other abusive scumbags."

The problem with this logic is that it fails to account for three important differences: 1) most ISPs have a fundamental business -- if not moral -- interest in helping protect people; 2) the visibility of illicit activities online makes it much easier to get at, and help, those who are being victimized; and 3) a one-stop-shop is more helpful for law enforcement than for criminals. In short, Craigslist is not a pimp, but a public perch from which law enforcement can watch without being seen.

She goes into detail on all three points. It's an incredibly eloquent defense of Craigslist that should be required reading for all of the politicians, reporters and so-called "public interest groups" that have been running the media campaign against Craigslist, without understanding these basic points. I'd love to see any of the attorneys general who have been grandstanding actually try to respond to this. I doubt any of them will.

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Attorneys General Continue Grandstanding Against Craigslist

Mike Masnick — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:26:41 PDT

This is hardly a surprise, given the well-coordinated media campaign against Craigslist, but despite multiple "settlements" with various state attorneys general, it appears that those AGs keep going back to the headline-generating well of demanding Craigslist "fix" things. You may recall that nearly two years ago, after being hounded by some AGs, Craigslist settled with the AGs, despite clearly being protected by Section 230 of the CDA. However, despite it being "settled," some AGs felt it wasn't enough and six months later there was another settlement. And, of course, it wasn't long before the AGs started complaining again.

So, take a guess what's happening now. Once again, 17 attorneys general (down from in the past) have sent a letter demanding that Craigslist shut down the "adult services" section of the site (which, it should be noted, Craigslist only created in response to AG pressure in one of these earlier settlements). What's ridiculous about this is that it's a complete "head in the sand" approach that these AGs are taking towards their jobs. In fact, this is the exact opposite of them doing their jobs. Rather than actually going after any criminals who use Craigslist -- as some smart law enforcement officials do -- these AGs are actively pushing this activity further underground where it will be harder for them to stop it. And they're doing it by focusing in on the highly emotional claims of "child trafficking" on the site -- as if those involved suddenly will stop trafficking if they can't post to Craigslist.

Frankly, it's sickening. These 17 attorneys general are effectively demanding that Craigslist stop making it so easy for them to find people involved in child trafficking. Here's a great way for these AGs to actually do their job and to use the tools readily available to track down, capture and stop human traffickers, and their response is to grandstand and blame the company that helps them do that. Rather than fighting human trafficking, these AGs are further enabling it. Just recently we wrote about Topix CEO Chris Tolles' experience dealing with crusading AGs who know they don't have the law on their side, but who use the press to bully companies into changing. Watching this process play out with Craigslist, it's clear that even if you "settle" those AGs may continue to hound you, as long as it's going to generate headlines falsely claiming that they're "doing something" to "protect the children."

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Insider's View: How Grandstanding State Attorneys General Make Life Miserable For Law Abiding Tech Companies

Mike Masnick — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:03:00 PDT

For years, we've pointed out how various state attorneys general seem to focus much more on grandstanding against certain companies, rather than actually helping in certain situations. What was really amazing was the incredibly clear pattern every time it happened. It would involve an attorney general who was running for higher office, going to the press and threatening some company, even if there was no legal basis whatsoever for the threat. It's as if every AG running for higher office has taken a page out of the playbook of Eliot Spitzer who used this strategy for years to get him headlines that took him right into the NY governor's mansion (which, of course, he then left due to a different sort of headline a few years later...).

Among the current crop of AGs playing this game, there's been Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett (running for governor) who subpoenaed Twitter to uncover some anonymous critics. There's South Carolina's Henry McMaster (who tried to run for governor) threatening Craigslist management with criminal charges. But the two biggest users of this playbook have to be NY's Andrew Cuomo (running for governor) -- who has targeted social networks and ISPs for not censoring content -- despite no legal obligation to do so, and Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal (running for Senate) who has grandstanded with the best of them in going after tons of tech companies with almost no legal basis at all.

So, of course, I wasn't surprised when I heard, back in February, that Kentucky's Attorney General, Jack Conway, had started threatening local news/community site Topix. After all, Conway is running for the US Senate. Still, once Conway started the ball rolling, Blumenthal actually stepped in and led the ongoing gameplan. At issue? The company let people pay a small fee to "expedite" the process of reviewing comments for abuse. There is absolutely nothing illegal about this. A website has no legal obligation to monitor its user-generated content, and it doesn't lose its safe harbor protections if it does monitor such content. So I was a bit surprised to see Topix settle the charges and change its policies.

Thankfully, Topix's CEO Chris Tolles has written up a detailed post at TechCrunch, that is a nice behind the scenes account of how the whole thing went down, and what an incredible scam it is. It starts out, of course, with an attorney general (in this case Conway) going straight to the press, rather than to the company:

Through this press release, which accused us of requiring payment to review abusive posts, I discovered that the Kentucky Attorney General had allegedly sent a letter asking me to provide information regarding our terms of service and policies around payment for expediting reviews. (The letter to which the press release referred was put in the US Mail and post marked five days after this incident.)

Tolles tried to be totally upfront and open with the various attorneys general who jumped onto the bandwagon (23 in all at the time), explaining to them exactly how Topix worked, how they reviewed comments, why they did things the way they did -- knowing full well that nothing Topix did broke the law. How did that work out? Once again, the AGs went to the press and used the info he had given them (again, which showed how what they were doing was legal) to grandstand against Topix:

So, after opening the kimono and giving these guys a whole lot of info on how we ran things, how big we were and that we dedicated 20% of our staff on these issues, what was the response. (You could probably see this one coming.)

That's right. Another press release. This time from 23 states' Attorney's General.

This pile-on took much of what we had told them, and turned it against us. We had mentioned that we required three separate people to flag something before we would take action (mainly to prevent individuals from easily spiking things that they didn't like). That was called out as a particular sin to be cleansed from our site. They also asked us to drop the priority review program in its entirety, drop the time it takes us to review posts from 7 days to 3 and "immediately revamp our AI technology to block more violative posts" amongst other things.

Eventually, he realized this just wasn't worth fighting over. The amount of revenue from the prioritized review was minimal, and just not worth the fight. So he gave in to the demands just to make them go away, giving the AGs (now up to 34 of them) another "settlement" headline -- even though they never once claimed Topix broke the law:

Pissed off people, not illegality, is the issue to watch -- At no time during this process were we accused of breaking any laws. The Attorneys General have interpreted their mandate of consumer protections very broadly, and if a lot of people *think* you are doing something wrong, you are likely to be headed for a problem.

As Tolles notes, this has become such a successful practice for East Coast state AGs to attack California companies, that successful startups need to beware, because it's going to happen a lot more often, and even when they've done nothing illegal, it's often going to make sense for them to just settle. American politics at work.

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Media Campaign Against Craigslist Continues, As WaPo Writes Article About Its Own Anti-Craigslist Advertiser

Mike Masnick — Mon, 9 Aug 2010 07:30:27 PDT

Last week, we wrote about how the misguided, politics-driven media campaign against Craigslist was ramping up again with a half-page ad in The Washington Post, obviously targeted at DC politicians. Paul Levy, who had sent over a scan of the ad now alerts us that the very next day, the Washington Post had a one-sided anti-Craigslist article, where it cites the ad. As Levy asks, has the Washington Post now stooped so low that buying a half-page ad gets you a one-sided story? Very disappointing move by the Washington Post.

The story, of course, is the same one that a bunch of politicians have been grandstanding over. There is prostitution on Craigslist. No doubt about it. Craigslist has set up a few different systems over the past couple of years to try to stop it, but of course, people always figure out ways to get around such blocks. The problem, now, is that all these politicians and media types seem to want to blame Craigslist, rather than blame the people actually involved in the prostitution rings. As we've noted time and time again, law enforcement agencies that work with Craigslist have found that it's a great tool for fighting illegal prostitution and breaking up prostitution rings. Craigslist actually has set up a special interface for law enforcement to use for this purpose.

The Washington Post notes exactly none of this. Instead, it asks why Craig Newmark hasn't responded to the "open letter" from a girl who was sold as an underage prostitute via the site a few years back (well before Craigslist set up these new restrictions). Separately, CNN ran a similar anti-Craigslist opinion piece written by the same group who bought the newspaper ads. At least CNN allowed Craigslist's Jim Buckmaster an opening to reply.

Obviously, this is a topic that creates an emotional response in many -- as it should. Underage girls forced into prostitution is a horrifying problem, and I'm all for doing anything possible to bring those actually responsible to justice. The problem is that putting the blame on Craigslist doesn't do anything to help solve the problem. If anything, it will make it much worse. It certainly won't stop those involved in forcing girls into prostitution rings. It certainly won't stop those rings from operating. It certainly won't stop the ability of individuals to find these rings via the internet. The only thing it will do is push that information further underground, to platforms and services that aren't willing to work with law enforcement and don't actually help efforts to stop such things. Blaming Craigslist is exactly the wrong approach and makes the problem worse. I read the open letter to Craig, and for very good reasons, it breaks your heart to hear about the horrible things that happened to these girls. But, in reading it, I can't help but wonder why their anger and questions are directed at Craig, rather than those who sold them as prostitutes.

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Political Campaign Against Craigslist Ratchets Up

Mike Masnick — Fri, 6 Aug 2010 13:57:44 PDT

The ongoing, misguided and dangerously self-defeating grandstanding political campaign against Craigslist apparently ratcheted up a bit today. Paul Alan Levy points out that in the print edition of today's Washington Post, there's a giant "advertisement" that is an "open letter to Craig Newmark" from two former child prostitutes who were offered up via Craigslist. It is depressing and heartbreaking to hear their story: However, placing the blame on Craigslist is entirely misguided. Yes, it was the tool that was used, but the anger should be directed at those who turned them into prostitutes, and at law enforcement for not using these publicly available tools to do their job. Some law enforcement agencies have learned that Craigslist is a great tool for finding and catching those responsible. If these sorts of ads get forced off Craigslist, it won't stop the prostitution. It'll just go further underground and make it that much more difficult for law enforcement to do anything. As it stands now, Craigslist works closely with law enforcement to catch those actually responsible. Blaming the company (or Craig himself) is misguided and likely to do more harm than good.

It makes for good political grandstanding -- which is why it's been put in the Washington Post on a giant ad on page 3. Politicians will see it, and you can bet someone will start grandstanding about this shortly... but it will be counterproductive. The real question should be why law enforcement isn't using Craigslist more to find and stop the folks actually responsible for these sorts of horrible atrocities.

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Aren't There More Important Things For Congress To Focus On Than The iPhone's Crappy Antenna?

Mike Masnick — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 04:53:58 PDT

We haven't really written about the whole Apple iPhone antenna thing because, really, who cares? As the NY Times pointed out, it's just a phone. It's a nice phone, by all accounts, and the antenna problems seem like they could be pretty annoying, but there wasn't much for us to comment on that wasn't already covered by a thousand other blogs. However, you know things have reached silly season when even our Congressional reps are getting involved. Senator Chuck Schumer, who can grandstand with the best of them, has decided that this antenna issue is an issue for Congress to be concerned about, and has penned a letter to Steve Jobs ("Dear Mr. Jobs,") to come forward and explain the issue. Of course, Schumer sent the letter after Apple had already scheduled its press conference for later this morning where it's expected that something (no one's quite sure what) will be resolved about the antenna. But, really, what role does Congress have in this at all? The story is getting plenty of attention from all over the place already. It's not like Congress can help shine a light on it. All this appears to be is Schumer stepping into a headline because it's a hot topic. Sometimes it makes you wonder if Congressional Reps & Senators now have their press people monitoring the Twitter trending topics for issues grandstand-worthy....

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Cuomo's New Plan: A Good Idea Or A Chance For More Grandstanding?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:53:00 PDT

As part of NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's grandstanding against child porn, he's mostly been making silly threats against the wrong parties in ways that don't actually help stop child porn (and could make it worse). However, his latest announcement actually sounds a lot more reasonable. His office is putting together a database of offending photos, and letting social networks compare uploads to the database to try to stop the uploads of known offending photos. I would imagine that it also records who was trying to upload that content. Some care would need to be taken to make sure that this effort really does focus on actually offending images -- one thing that makes such an effort tricky. I also do wonder if it makes sense for a gov't agency to be putting together the database, rather than having it done by the industry itself. On top of that, given Cuomo's earlier grandstanding and his usual methods, you have to expect that it would be long before Cuomo would start threatening any social network that doesn't use his system with some sort of bogus (but very, very public) legal threats. In other words, when the gov't (especially someone like Cuomo) sets up a system like this, how long until he starts acting like it's mandatory, rather than optional?

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Andrew Cuomo Grandstanding Again: Threatens To Sue Social Networking Site Over Actions Of Its Users

Mike Masnick — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:10:17 PDT

Now that NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has officially announced his long-expected campaign to be governor of New York (following in his father's footsteps), it looks like he's back to grandstanding by making very public, if very misleading, threats against tech companies. You may recall that this is Andrew Cuomo's basic blueprint for censoring the internet. It starts with him releasing an "open letter" to various online services, claiming that they have child porn on their service, and if they don't clean it up, he's going to sue. Of course, he's never actually sued, because he probably wouldn't win. Child porn is very much illegal and a very, very bad thing, but the responsible parties are those who are actually creating, uploading and sharing the content -- not the larger service providers. A Section 230 defense almost certainly protects most of these sites. But... of course, when you have a high profile politician threatening to sue you for child porn, you cave. It's simply not worth the legal battle. Cuomo would gleefully take a legal battle where he gets headlines about how he's "fighting to protect people from child porn" by taking on big evil tech companies -- even if he would lose eventually. He just needs the headlines to get elected.

And so, here he goes again, threatening the social networking site Tagged.com with a lawsuit for not cleaning up child porn on the site. Apparently, Cuomo's office had people set up accounts and go searching for stuff, which they reported to Tagged, but which the company failed to take down in a timely manner. So he threatens Tagged. But what isn't explained is why he's not doing anything to go after those actually responsible. Rather than blame Tagged, why not work with them to help find out who's responsible for the content and bring them to justice?

Reading between the lines, it looks like Cuomo's way of trying to get around Section 230 with a pretty sneaky tactic. He wants to charge Tagged with false and deceptive advertising. How's that work? Well, Tagged has said that it has safety measures in place to deal with inappropriate content. So Cuomo's office is claiming that because those measures don't work very well, that the company is falsely advertising its safety measures. As a way to get around Section 230 safe harbors, it's pretty sneaky.

The really disturbing part of all of this is that, in his blatant move to grab headlines for "fighting child porn," he's actually making the problem a lot worse. When this stuff is happening on mainstream sites, it's easier to track down and capture those actually responsible. Driving it further underground doesn't stop the activity -- it just makes it that much more difficult for law enforcement to do its actual job. But Cuomo doesn't really care about that. He just wants to get elected. If it makes the child porn problem worse, no big deal, apparently.

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And Of Course: Grandstanding Anti-Craigslist Politicians Still Not Satisfied

Mike Masnick — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:48:00 PDT

Well, this one was rather easy to predict. Way back in November, after coming under pressure from various grandstanding state Attorneys General (who seem wholly unfamiliar with Section 230 of the CDA), Craigslist caved in to pressure (despite no legal basis requiring them to do so), and it changed the way its erotic services section worked. The various AGs claimed they were satisfied. But it took all of a few months before some misguided news report showed that people were misusing Craigslist again, and suddenly these AGs sensed an opportunity to get press... so they went on the offensive again, blaming Craigslist for the actions of its users. It makes for a good headline.

Once again, in May, Craigslist caved again and further changed how the site worked and handled "adult" type ads. It also showed that the ads on its site were a lot less graphic than those found on many sites run by traditional newspapers. But, suing the local newspaper doesn't generate headlines like suing Craigslist. And, given that it did such a good job generating press (and got Craigslist to cave when it didn't need to), you had to assume that it wouldn't take long for politicians to start complaining again.

And... here we go. Connecticut's AG Richard Blumenthal, who has milked the bogus Craigslist story for a while, along with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who sued Craigslist earlier this year, have both come out to once again grandstand against Craigslist and insist that the company still isn't doing enough.

Seriously. Can someone send either of these gentlemen a copy of Section 230 of the CDA, along with a nice side dish of common sense. To wit:

It is not Craigslist that is the problem. It is the users of the site who are advertising prostitution. They are the ones violating the law. Not Craigslist.
Not only that, but Craigslist is very cooperative with law enforcement officials in helping them track down those who break the law via the site. Plenty of law enforcement officials have figured this out and know to use Craigslist as a tool to help them crack down on prostitution.
Cracking down on Craigslist doesn't slow down or prevent the illegal activity at all. Those who are involved in prostitution (i.e., the actual law breaking) are still out there, and are quick to find other sources in which to advertise.
So cracking down on Craigslist is blaming the messenger -- and making it more difficult to really crack down on prostitution, by driving it further underground.

You would think that such common sense (and the fact that the law makes this clear as well) would have, perhaps, sunk in by now. But, alas, common sense doesn't get you headlines in the paper.

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Craigslist Goes On The Offensive: Sues South Carolina's Henry McMaster

Mike Masnick — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:53:22 PDT

It appears that Craigslist has realized, in responding to all those grandstanding Attorneys General, that it's better to take an offensive position than to continue with its defensive strategy. First, it pointed out how misguided South Carolina's Henry McMaster was in threatening to charge Craigslist's management with criminal prosecution, and then it demanded an apology. With no apology forthcoming, Craigslist has sued Henry McMaster seeking declaratory relief that its actions do not violate the law. McMaster has continued to push forward with his plans to file a lawsuit, claiming that Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster is "the #1 defendant." Craigslist, in response, points out that Craigslist:

is operating in full compliance with all applicable laws
has earned a reputation for being unusually responsive to requests from law enforcement
has eliminated its "erotic services" category for all US cities
has adopted screening measures far stricter than those Mr McMaster himself personally endorsed with his signature just 6 months ago
has far fewer and far tamer adult service ads than many mainstream print and online venues operating in South Carolina
has made its representatives available to hear Mr McMaster's concerns in person
has politely asked Mr McMaster to retract and apologize for his unreasonable threats

So, in response, Craigslist has filed its lawsuit to have a court declare that the company is not violating any laws, and that McMaster has no case. This is a good move, and you would have hoped it would quiet down McMaster, but he's actually (no, seriously) using this to claim victory. In a statement on his website McMaster claims:

The defensive legal action craigslist has taken against the solicitors and my office is good news. It shows that craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time.... Unfortunately, we had to inform them of possible state criminal violations concerning their past practices to produce a serious response. We trust they will now adhere to the higher standards they have promised. This office and the law enforcement agencies of South Carolina will continue to monitor the site to make certain that our laws are respected.

That's just blatant outright lying now. Craigslist made those changes last week, and at the time McMaster's response was: "That response doesn't work" and claimed it was proceeding with plans to punish Craigslist management with jail time. Since then, Craigslist has made no other change, other than to sue McMaster. To suddenly claim that it's made a new change and is taking the matter seriously, when the only change is suing McMaster, is quite the delusional response. I have no idea how likely it is that McMaster will win his current race for the Governor's spot in South Carolina -- but so far the man has been an embarrassment to the state.

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Craigslist Caving Shows The Perils Of Self-Policing... Or The Perils Of Grandstanding Politicians?

Mike Masnick — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:39:00 PDT

Following Craigslist's decision to cave in to demands and start monitoring every "adult services" post on its platform, the Wall Street Journal is running a rather odd article suggesting that this somehow shows "the perils of self-policing" by a community, and suggesting that such crowdsourced reviews don't work. Except, that's a gross misreading of the actual situation. The crowdsourcing worked just fine. The issue was that members of the Craigslist community didn't have a problem with the ads in question. Those who did have problems were grandstanding politicians looking to get elected to higher office. If anything, it doesn't show the perils of self-policing, it shows the perils of getting caught in the sights of grandstanding politicians who need to whip up populist anger even if they have no legal basis to do so.

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Looks Like Henry McMaster Is Upset About His Lost Craigslist Photo Op As Well

Mike Masnick — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:07:11 PDT

Yesterday, Craigslist caved in to the demands of various state Attorneys General, and agreed to pre-moderate all of the "adult" ads that go on their site. This appeared to be exactly what many grandstanding AGs had been asking for... but it appears that more than a few of them were upset that Craigslist did this without granting the AGs a chance to take credit for it. First, we had NY AG Andrew Cuomo's petulent statement about how Craigslist never should have done this without first getting approval from Andrew Cuomo, and now the EFF points out a similar complaint from South Carolina AG Henry McMaster, who says that he's going to continue his plan to throw Craigslist management in jail unless they remove all sexually explicit material from the site.

It's difficult to know where to start on this, but McMaster's understanding of the law doesn't seem to have anything to do with the actual law. First off, plenty of sexually explicit material is not illegal. Second, even if the material is somehow illegal, the liability is on those who posted it, not Craigslist.

Oh yeah. It's probably worth noting that a similarity between both Cuomo and McMaster? Both are apparently (definitely in McMaster's case) seeking their respective state's governorship... You would think that abusing a high-level gov't position for grandstanding and censorship would disqualify one from getting to run a state, but apparently not.

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Senate Looks To Outlaw Phishing, Even Though It's Already Illegal

Mike Masnick — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:21:00 PST

As the saying goes, when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. The folks in Congress sure do an awful lot of whacking at various nails these days. The latest is a new bill in the Senate that seeks to outlaw phishing. One tiny point is important here: phishing is already illegal. So, really all this bill does is allow these politicians to claim that they took a stand to stop phishing. Except, it's actually worse than that. Not only will this bill not do anything to stop phishing, it will actually make life worse for plenty of non-criminals. That's because a part of the bill would outlaw hiding domain name registration information. Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for not wanting to reveal your info in the whois database -- but according to this bill, it won't be allowed any more. If you want to own a domain, you'll need to cough up your name, address and phone number to whoever wants it -- and they better be legit. If you provide false info, you'll also be breaking the law. So, it won't do anything new to stop phishing, but will make it much more difficult to own a domain anonymously. That's quite a nail.

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