rjones21

First I'll tackle the second paragraph. In regards to pornagraphic material, the law varies from state to state and country to country. In many places it is the same as the age of legal consent(if they can legally have sex they can read and view such materials) which ranges from 15 to 21 depending on where they live. Ohio for example the age of legal consent 16 yrs. old if I remember correctly. While an emancipated minor doesn't have full privleges, they do have, as legal adults, full civil rights. Secondly, Ebay is a commercial business. They can, within reason, deny service to anyone. Just as a bar can throw out people under 21, 5 minutes before happy hour starts. The site admin considers AFF to be a club. According to the Supreme Court, private clubs are not exempt from antidisrimination laws. And as far as the first sentence, the ACLU might disagree with that. If said emancipated minor had a stong enough case, the ACLU might back them up. If that happened the case would most likely make it into court. But, as I said in my last post, the site admin has taken steps to prepare for such a scenario. It's nice to know that they ain't "flying blindly into a storm" as the saying goes.

Thats good to hear. My biggest concern was that you were ignoring potential legal problems simply due to them being unlikey or improbable. That you might be unprepared for the possibilty, however low it might seem, of getting hit with a legitimate antidiscrimination lawsuit or getting hit by a vindictive and purely frivolous lawsuit. The latter is a concern in this lawsuit happy country that we both live in. I once again DON'T want to see this site go under or get shutdown, and too many frivolous lawsuits would drain the site budget. It's nice to know that you are not ignoring the afforementioned potential legal problems and are considering the site's postion carefully. I think I can go to sleep easier knowing that you are prepared in case things turn ugly. Side note: you would be suprised by what kinds of garbage makes it to trial and wins. I know I am everytime I watch the news. No longer watch local news.

Now I'm confused. I thought that a site was a public site if the general public had access ie. Jon Doe can visit the site and read the stories. That the site was a private site if you had log in to access its contents ie. Jon Doe can't just visit and read the stories without being a member and logging in first. In either case I believe you are subject to antidisrimination laws. I guess all I can really say is be careful in how you handle cases and cross my fingers nothing goes wrong. I was always told to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Last idea for you is to start a war chest just in case things do turn ugly. I REALLY don't want to see the site fail or get shutdown.

It isn't a question of winning the case so much as the cost of defending the site's postion in court. The only solution that I can think of is to make the site completely private, restricting access to most of the site to members only. That would qualify the site as a private club and even then you run into the Supreme Court rulings in: Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984) Board of Directors of Rotary International v. Rotary Club of Duarte (1987) that stated freedom of association did not prevent the enforcement of state or local antidiscrimination laws. They may be able to cite the federal Age Discrimination Act as well. If an emancipated minor proves that (s)he is an legal adult you would have a definate problem. Ask them to show legal adult status, if they cant or refuse then you can kick them out. Of course you still would to deal with the potential problem of frivolous lawsuits by legal minors and/or their families. I'm not even going to touch the pontential conflicts with the laws in the 191 other countries of the world. So I think my concern are real and not imaginary.

In previeous post it should of said on the fourth line: There have been 13 yrs. olds who sued their own parents. I don't know what they would believe that they would get from sueing you, but it would run up your costs. I blame my lapse on my having ADHD.

Actually I did not recieve that e-mail, so thanks for including it in your reply here. I think I understand your lawyers take on it, but that still doesn't alleiviate my concerns that someone you kick off will use those court descisions as the basis for levying a civil lawsuit. Especially by those who were emacipated by the state courts and are legally adults dispite being 16 or 17 yrs. old. Fact is ANYONE can sue just about anyone. There have been13 yrs. olds who sued their own parents. What they would believe that they would from sueing you, but it would run up your costs. Oh, and could you please simply remove thier stories from the achive or put notice in the summariess. I hate seeing what looks to be a great story only to find it belonged to a minor and you took it over. If the story is no longer available it shouldn't be visiable to us readers. Just my opinion.

The following is an email i sent to the admin along with the response: COPA is technically unconstitutional. Here is an excerpt from wikipedia: 'The federal government was enjoined from enforcing COPA by a court order in 1998. In 1999, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the injunction and struck down the law, ruling that it was too broad in using "community standards" as part of the definition of harmful materials. In May 2002, the Supreme Court reviewed this ruling, found the given reason insufficient and returned the case to the Circuit Court; the law remained blocked. On March 6, 2003, the 3rd Circuit Court again struck down the law as unconstitutional, this time finding that it would hinder protected speech among adults. The government again sought review in the Supreme Court. On June 30, 2004, in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, the Supreme Court upheld the injunction on enforcement, ruling that the law was likely to be unconstitutional. Notably, the court mentioned that "filtering’s superiority to COPA is confirmed by the explicit findings of the Commission on Child Online Protection, which Congress created to evaluate the relative merits of different means of restricting minors' ability to gain access to harmful materials on the internet." The court also wrote that it was five years since the district court had considered the effectiveness of filtering software and that two less-restrictive laws had been passed since COPA, one prohibiting misleading domain names and another creating a child-safe .kids domain, and that given the rapid pace of internet development those might be sufficient to protect children. The court referred the case back to the district court for a trial, which began on October 25, 2006. In preparation for that trial, the Department of Justice issued subpoenas to various search engines to obtain Web addresses and records of searches as one part of a study undertaken by a witness in support of the law. The search engines turned over the requested information, except for Google, which challenged the subpoenas. The court limited the subpoena to a sample of URLs in Google's database, but declined to enforce the request for searches conducted by users; Google then complied. On March 22, 2007, U.S. District Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr. once again struck down the Child Online Protection Act, finding the law facially violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Reed issued an order permanently enjoining the government from enforcing COPA, commenting that "perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."' And the link to this informaion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_Act By abiding by this law you are exposing yourself to the danger of a civil lawsuit each time you kick a 16yr or 17yr old off the site and delete their account. Not to mention some 16 and 17 yr olds in Ohio have been emancipated by the courts and are legally adults, not minors. Better discuss this information with your laywers before you find yourselves and the site sued by someone you kicked out under the COPA. A Concerned 25yr Old Member Robert Jones Subject: Out for the weekend, back on Tuesday May 15th I have personal matters to attend to (my college graduation and my wedding) and will be back Tuesday May 15th, 2007. Please be patient and I will respond to you when I return. Thank you for your patience! ~Dark Avenger Moderator & Head Tech I figured posting both here would get me a response to my concerns.