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yahoo is getting sued for child porn on its chat rooms.

Jeez. At best Yahoo have been completely negligent in checking their chatrooms for illegal activity. At worst they've deliberately turned a blind eye to what's been going on in order to increase profits...

"5 To 13-Year-Old Kiddies Who Love Sex"
Dear god, please tell me this is a joke...

So, first, yes, it's sickening.


Second, on a broader point, should Yahoo really be held responsible for what goes on in it's public spaces? Is it a fair comparison to say that a company that provides public conference rooms should be held legally, and more importantly, morally responsible for what goes on in those rooms? I'm not 100% convinced that that's the case.

Yes, I think they should. Firstly, since they're offering these free chatrooms to everybody, they really ought to realise that people are going to use them for unsavoury activities. Secondly, it would be very easy indeed for them to find these chatrooms and get rid of them. I don't think they can just wash their hands of it and say "hey, it's a public space, not our problem" when they were making money off paedophiles, because it was easily preventable. Frankly, I'm all for stringing Yahoo up.

Yes it's a public space, but it becomes a crime when they profit it off it, and you can't tell they didn't see these chat rooms, what do they pay their staff to do, pick their nose.

How exactly would they be making money from the people who were frequenting these chatrooms? Sure they're making money from advertisers, and they're showing those adverts to the chatrooms users, but that's advertising for you. Paedophiles like consumer products too.

I take your point that it is ludicrously easy to police, and I think I agree that Yahoo should have done more. But the degree of blame that Yahoo are getting seems out-of-proportion to me.

Uh, in the way you just described. The more views the ads get, the more Yahoo can charge for an ad placement. So, yes, when a paedophile visits "5 To 13-Year-Old Kiddies Who Love Sex", it means money for Yahoo.



Whether through passive complicity or through gross negligence, they were aiding and abetting child abuse. From the article:



I don't think we should just slap Yahoo on the wrist for that.

I think I've pinned down my feeling of unease on this.

It feels like Yahoo will be blamed for the sins of it's users. Which strikes me as wrong.

However, I accept everything you just posted - it's just my cynicism getting the better of me.

It seems to me like prosecuting the local council for running a park if criminals happen to use it as well as regular citizens. They should have monitored it better, but they shouldn't be nailed to the cross and vilified. I mean, isn't the place suppossed to be a hands-off public meeting place? Of course if they make a profit off of it then it becomes a murkier problem.

Hmmm....

but is it fair to sue yahoo because some mommy walked in on her child having cyber sex? why arnt the parents themselves policing what there children do on the internet? if anything this is the parents faults. none of these rooms are particularly new, ive been using yahoo chat narly everyday for the past 5 years and ive seen all of these room and worse, for the past five years. yahoo owns public chatrooms how are they supposed to be expected to police everything when it is a public chat room, there is freedom of speech still. yes its bad that children are doing stuff like this, but since now a days it seems parents are neglecting there children and then sueing over it later i would say this is very unfair.

They can police them very easily. By doing a quick search and then deleting the chat rooms which are dedicated to paedophilia. Wouldn't be hard, would it? Take somebody ten minutes.

And anyway, it's not the parents suing. The companies who were advertising on Yahoo are suing because their ads were being displayed on chat rooms dedicated to abusing children, in breach of their contract with Yahoo.

actually theres anouther link that i lost it goes more in depth then that one, but i cant seem to find it at all.

this stuff jsut doesnt only happen in chatrooms under the name of ""5 To 13-Year-Old Kiddies Who Love Sex", it happens in every chat room. so if they get rid of all the obviouse ones... how are they going to police the rest? people will still find a way to do what they want to do, and the only real way to stop it is shut down all chat all together. you can go to a chat about music and get pm's from 10 guys trying to hit on you and find out where you are. in fact, you can go anywhere disclose any of your im usernames and get people that will hit on you. sueing yahoo isnt going to solve the problem. children are "abused" by people that go to there schools threatening them online, and no one stops to think "perhapes i should jsut block them". like ive said befor ive been using yahoo for 5 years now daily, and you get the same randomized pop ups every time you go to a room. these rooms have been here forever, why havent the companies gone "hmmm, maybe i should check out what im advertising on". direct tv makes porn availible to any child that knows how to use a remote control. hbo, starz, and cinnimax show sexual shows every night after 10:00. why arnt these companies being sued? you see comercials on them, comercials taking part in making sex avalible to children. why has no one sued direct tv or hbo? even the "wb" a mostly childrens show, shows "call for sex" adds after hours. now whats to stop a 14 year old boy from calling that?

(sorry i hit some key and it posted befor i could finish)

Yahoo supports Paedophiles.

Computer Games cause Murders.

DVD-R's support terrorism.

MP3s are the cause of War.


Shutting down the chatrooms won't be enough, those sneeky perverts will start making websites, what might be for the best is if we have all media censored by the state.

[message deleted - US Gov.]

Let's strip this down to basics. They signed a contract - multiple contracts, in fact - saying that they wouldn't do a thing. They then did that very thing. Now they are in trouble for it. Where's the problem?

The problem is in the media blowing it out of proportion.

Some companys trying to get out of paying for advertising due to a legal loophole once a local TV station shouted bloody murder about Yahoo! over somthing which it has little to no control doesn't seem to be the story they are running.

Could you explain a little bit more please, DI?

Well thats what is actually happening, that is the "news"

A few companys are trying to get out of paying for advertising, because some TV station decided to run a 'the evils of the internet' show and they saw a way of not having to pay for a service that has already been rendered.

Big whoop.

I agree with DI. Commies point is fine and dandy and indeed the legal issue is about contracts and so on. That article however breezily drops sentences like:
... I mean, please. Kidnapping? Webcams? 5 to 13 year-olds? This is crime-of-the-century grade stuff, but then the article sidles back into how it is unapropriate to advertise pepsi on there. What can I say. It IS inappropriate. But although I'm sure they should nuke the rooms and get organised, for pete's sake, this article is DEFINITLEY to trying to make it as much as possible into a story about children being kidnapped by wierdos. They don't offer any proof or indeed any clue as to what they are getting at. They just mention, off-hand, the worst crimes known to man and let the reader fill in the blanks.
Somehow I'm not articulating this correctly, but I think what I dislike about that article is that it is suspiciously alarmist, in a very 'non-specific' way.

ew. thats just messed up.

I think yahoo should take full responsibility for what goes on their chatrooms. they should lower the capacity of the chatrooms for easier monitering.

*looks blankly*

So your sugesting they increase staff, lower advertising revenue, and take on legal responsibility for somthing they can't control, and you seriously expect a company to even dream of this as a viable route?

No, I what I meant to say is they should just lower the capacity of the number of people in the chatrooms for easier monitering.

You don't seem to get what DarkInferno was saying, so here it is:

Lowering the capacitey of their chat rooms would lower ad revenue beacuse they would have less chat rooms to advertise on.

At the moment they are not monitored so if they were going to be (as you suggested) then they would have to increase staff.

Even if they were moderated, then they can't really control what people say on them. So why would they take resposibility for it?

This stuff just makes me feel sick. How can someone fail to notice a title like that? How can someone turn a blind eye to it? It's horrible.

Whats even more disturbing is: I wonder how many little kids were saved from real life sexual abuse because their potential abusers were looking at other little kids on the internet?

This article is misleading.

In yahoo chats there are two kinds of chat rooms. There are the chats that yahoo creates and sanctions, they are monitored by yahoo and fall under strict terms and conditions. Then there are the yahoo user chats; these are the dark underbellies of the chat world. When you enter you are advised that these are unsupervised chats and yahoo is not responsible for the content. Basically they are public advertisements for group chats. You can find anything that could be considered disturbing there, man boy love, forced sex, incest, bondage, scat, etc.. can all be found in these chats. Since yahoo in anyway other than hosting does not govern them yahoo is not responsible for the content. This is where these topics where found, not in the basic yahoo chats.

As far as the advertising is concerned it is an automatic advertisement that comes up whenever you load a chat window. It comes up when you load the initial chat window, not when you switch from the standard yahoo chat rooms to the yahoo user chat rooms.

Personally I don't think that yahoo ever put two and two together. Since this has been pointed out yahoo has disabled the yahoo user chats. Unfortunately this article does not point any of this out and leads the reader to believe that yahoo created these chats. While I dislike the idea of these rooms this article is more inflammatory than factual. These rooms are basically the equivalent of me creating a group chat on my yahoo messenger and inviting a bunch of perves to chat in it. While I dislike the content I don't belive that yahoo should be held responisble when they take every step to warn the user they are leaving the security of yahoo created chats and entering chats ran by there users.

I didn't know that about Yahoo security, but it makes sense. I really don't think that Yahoo should be blamed for the content of these chat rooms. Not every site can be as well-policed as matazone. Since Yahoo is not monitoring or controlling those chat rooms, they shouldn't be blamed. There are other places with free unpoliced chat rooms with content just as bad. Yahoo simply came into the public eye because of the ads from big companies. The real issue isn't the Internet, it's the people using it. Parents should be watching their children or using a safe service that blocks chat rooms like that. The media is making this seem bigger than it is. I agree that the content is disgusting, but this stuff happens in real life and on TV. The Internet is just one way out of many to let it out.