Dmoz Lawsuits

I have a question for the editors / Dp members to answer. This is a serious question and not meant to imply anything, I choose this topic because I personally feel that this topic might open a few more doors for communication between editors and non editors.

What do any of you believe would happen or has it happen, if someone filed a civil suit against Netscape/ODP/DMOZ for collusion and conspiring to commit fraud based on the rejection of site / sites for inclusion to DMOZ. Your personal not legal opinions, unless you are an attorney.

I know that some of you editors might say that ODP can list or reject any site / person it wishes to, but I would offer that is not the case legally based on its guidelines afforded to those wishing to be placed in the directory by Netscape as to what is considered listable and unlistable sites. Questions to follow.

1. Would collusion be hard to prove in your opinion?

2. With all the speculation of corruption, would fraud be hard to prove?

3. That you are aware of have there been any lawsuits filed against Netscape because of DMOZ / ODP / Editor

4. Would any of you ever file suit if you found these legal processes available to you?

5. Do you believe that there are some editors that wont list a site because of 1. they dont like the person who submitted it 2. the site would compete with their personal site or a client site?

6. If ODP / DMOZ was ever found to be held liable for these type civil offenses would you still remain as an editor?

7. Do you believe a DMOZ listing has an effect on rankings within the search engines?

Let the discussion begin and I would ask that noone give any of the editors red rep for their comments please. I want this to be a civil discussion and not become a flaming session.

 

I believe it is actually the legal case that these directories can refuse to list a site without needing to give a reason - in the same way that a shop can refuse to serve someone. If the rejection is on personal grounds to do with race/sex/age then we are talking about a whole different thing imho.

Note: I am neither an edit or a lawyer so I could very well be wrong but you did ask for opinions

 

This is what you agree to when you suggest a site:

 

Disclaimers and agreements such as those do not protect sites from illegal discrimination on the grounds of race/age/sex etc. thats why I stated that as a whole different legal arena - but beyond that I agree with you.

 

I do agree with you on grounds of discrimination but from my understanding tort law does not protect disclaimers such as that. Its almost like a car dealership telling you that by buying this used car you agree to hold harmless the car dealership by purchasing it. So if you go out and crash the car in to something and the breaks didnt work, you cant take action against the car dealership.

In business in general most disclaimers / agreements / Terms of Use that businesses create are illegal and will not hold up in court. Most of these are wrote in a manner to protect the business and strip the rights of the consumer to any legal action yet very few of them really stand up in court.

As it relates to DMOZ and from my understanding you may not provide editorial guidelines for submission and then strip away the rights of that submitter by asking them to waive those rights. That is considered ambiguous and in tort law, any agreement / terms of use clause that is considered ambiguous shall be held against the creator of that agreement. ( Meaning that agreement becomes void )

 

As far as i am aware it is still free to list in DMOZ, so the fact they are providing a free service takes away some of the legal constraints of a car dealership. When you buy a product or pay for a service, that contract comes above the terms of service. i.e. a company cannot say we reserve the right to keep your money and not provide the goods if we feel like it. However, as DMOZ does not take any money from you, they are under a lesser obligation to you as a user, as far as i understand it.

 

my point of view:
dmoz.org links to whatever it sees fit, just like any other web site. No one claims, it contains all sites on given topic.
There are hundrets of sites linking my competitors and not me. Should I sue them all?

 

No but would you agree or disagree that a listing in DMOZ is A LOT more valuable than a link from another site in most cases from Googles standpoint?

If a listing in DMOZ wasnt so important why would there be suspicions of corruption. The only reason for corruption IMO is greed / money which I believe that in certain industries not being listed in DMOZ is the kiss of death for being able to rank in Google.

Ranking in Google I am sure you would agree means more money and business for you, where there is only one DMOZ and several equal type sites your competitors link with. Common sense tells us that if this wasnt the case then why would we have ANY corruption in DMOZ.

To comment to the person who gave me red rep and didnt bother signing their name which I can only assume its an editor of our beloved DMOZ. BTW dont be so gutless and not post your name if you are going to make a comment and give red rep.

You may be right when it pertains to DMOZ, but I have never seen anything positive to speak of when it relates to DMOZ. Most of us are tired of DMOZ / corruption and when the opportunity presents its self and all us, as you call it whiners, will unite and cause our voices to be heard as one. This is when those ( You Know Who You Are ) self righteous VOLUNTEERS at DMOZ will learn that their power is not absolute.

To the topic at hand, I personally feel that these issues with DMOZ if it hasnt ended up in court yet will. Anyone who is willing to track a category, contact those who have submitted and been listed to get their details and IMO keep a solid record of this information would have grounds to take on DMOZ / Netscape.

Whos to say that a paticular site isnt submitted by someone it gets rejected and several months later that same site its submitted by someone who seems to be in favor with DMOZ and it gets accepted. ( Wonder what cause of action that could be taken ). This also doesnt include that so called disgruntled volunteer who may walk out with everything but the kitchen sink and expose DMOZ.

I will still state IMO it would not be difficult to prove bias, collusion and fraud as it relates to several listings in ODP. The real issue I believe is that noone who has felt bias has had the money or made a choice to go after them. Even with the sites I have now, I dont feel I have grounds but a new site that hasnt been submitted yet, well that is a different story when you compare it to every site within the category it would be listed in, there is no comparison.

 

I agree that a link from DMOZ is more valuable than link from free for all or paid directories. But DMOZ was not built to assist Google. (Who is older anyway? DMOZ or Google) If you think, Google is putting too much weight on the DMOZ link, speak to Google.
If anyone manages to built a better (more up to date / less "corrupted" ) directory, I am sure Google will make use of it to improve their results.

 

WOW nice explanaation Shawn. Each and every question got its answer. Cleared up the mess. Thanks.

 

That's part of the problem, isn't it? (Can you say Hutcheson?)

 

I think the robots.txt idea disallowing all SE robots is the best idea I have heard to date in regards to the DMOZ weighting situation.

It really would solve a lot of problems on the internet.

 

I agree, Spendlessly. It would not only be a huge step forward for DMOZ but it would also underscore the purported goals of the directory for those honest editors who really believe in those goals. Of course, those editors who are deriving PR benefit won't be nearly as happy, so I would expect fierce opposition to the idea.

No doubt, there would be non-DMOZ editors who would also be unhappy but I think overall it would be a huge improvement for that community as well.

 

Maybe a little late but these are my thoughts (for those who don't know I'm a DMOZ editor)

1. Would collusion be hard to prove in your opinion?
Yes

2. With all the speculation of corruption, would fraud be hard to prove?
Yes, atleast without access to internal resources (DMOZ editors know that sometimes corruptions happens, we do everything we can to locate these persons, remove them and correct their actions)

3. That you are aware of have there been any lawsuits filed against Netscape because of DMOZ / ODP / Editor
I don't have information about any lawsuits. But I have seen several people claiming they would start one.

4. Would any of you ever file suit if you found these legal processes available to you?
No. You can not blame the whole organisation if one person is corrupt.

5. Do you believe that there are some editors that wont list a site because of 1. they dont like the person who submitted it 2. the site would compete with their personal site or a client site?
I believe most editors won't behave in such a way. But I can not be sure that there never was or will be an editor that would do this (such an editor will be removed when we find he did this and the actions will be corrected)

6. If ODP / DMOZ was ever found to be held liable for these type civil offenses would you still remain as an editor?
It all depends on the situation.

7. Do you believe a DMOZ listing has an effect on rankings within the search engines?
Yes, but only a small effect as every link to your site has.

 

This could be true if the person suggesting a site would be a customer of DMOZ. But he isn't.

 

I have searched all of the lawsuits pending against AOL/Netscape. I can not find any involving DMOZ. Sites are suggested to DMOZ, not submitted. There is a profound difference in the perception and interpretation of a suggestion and a submission. A submission will imply certain obligations while a suggestion is just that, a suggestion. The link in DMOZ reads “suggest URL”, not “submit URL”. Almost all of the editors treat it like a suggestion and not a submission. The conditions that one agrees with when suggesting a site are very clear. Stating that most disclaimers do not hold up in court would contradict their wide spread use by any legitimate entity trying to eliminate undue risk. Editor corruption is not a speculation. It exists. There are thousands of volunteer editors; it will be naïve to think that all of them are devoid of malevolence. There are, however, very elaborate mechanisms in place to counter this scourge. Proving fraud, based on editor corruption, will require evaluating the intrinsic value of an ODP listing. I can not think of any widely accepted method to achieve this.

 

Unless it's in RZ - then it's a "target"

 

This comes from the DMOZ guidelines for real estate sites. They seem to use the word submission for editorial purposes.

As I do agree with you on suggest / submission as I have stated before any ambiguities within a suggested terms opf service shall be held against the creator of those terms / agreement.

Just for knowledge purposes here is the guidelines for a real estate submission in case we have any real estate webmasters here who were not aware of them.

With this information as I preceive it, it would seem to me that several sites should be listed by these SUBMISSION guidelines.