Shortcuts, Third-Party Ads and the Dangers of Automatic Content
CNN posted an article earlier this week about Yahoo Shortcuts tagging an article concerning Ashley Dupre (the call girl involved in the Eliot Spitzer scandal) with a link to Flickr images depicting purportedly underage girls. [Article] The same article also notes an earlier incident involving the Google AdSense system, which advertised luggage next to a news story of a murder victim found in a suitcase.
These incidents emphasize the continued need for businesses with online presences (such as websites, e-mail addresses, etc.) to control how they present themselves to the online public. The vast number of free widgets, applets and features available online may seem appealing any new business. For example, automatic content provides substantial ‘bulk’ for an otherwise sparse website. Advertising generates revenue for continued website maintenance and development. Free e-mail addresses, data depositories, etc. save businesses the time, effort and cost of setting up those resources themselves.
However, almost all of these features require a participating business to trust a substantial part of their carefully cultivated image to another person, entity or software routine, whether in terms of content generation or control, or the placement of advertisements by the features’ sponsors. As demonstrated by the CNN article, lapses in this trust may be embarrassing.
Furthermore, lapses may subject the business to various forms of derivative liability. For example, the mechanisms offered by Yahoo Shortcuts and Google AdSense for controlling some of the automatic content (albeit limited) may give rise to an argument that the business knew, should have known, or at least had the ability to control and restrict the objectionable content. While derivative liability is a multifaceted issue, and protections may be available under federal law for interactive computer service providers, it is better for businesses in the long run to exert stronger control over their own online presences as a means of avoiding, or at least minimizing, the issues seen above – even if they must expend some resources in the short term to do so.
