Why is my site removed?

Annie, Bradley

You are playing a game of now you see it, now you don't. Accordind to you, if a site is legal in it's hosting country and you don't want to list it then it should be legal in US too but if a site is illegal in US and you like to list it then it only needs to be legal in it's hosting country.
After all, you are not lawyers and can't be bothered with rules,regulations or procedures. You only need to know what is your goal, to list or not and then justify it some how.

There is no rules or regulations in DMOZ, except what it serves you in that minute.

I think this is a good summation of your postings.

 

The ODP has thousands of editors. They have a great range of personal opinions. I am willing to believe that there may be one prepared to argue in that rather strange way. But the editorial Guidelines are specific that child porn is illegal in most jurisdictions and should not be listed. There is no movement within the ODP to change that, as far as I know.

 

This seems to be a misunderstanding, but I'm not sure where it crept in. The hosting country for a site is not considered at all by Guidelines on illegal sites:
http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html#illegal

 

Not true, I believe you're so consumed with negativity that your mind is made up and you'll twist anything into what you want it to be. As long as reality is not relevant to you there's no point in opening myself up to the type of abuse you're capable of.

I'll just take this opportunity to say good-bye for now gworld, and have a nice holiday season. Maybe we can talk in the new year.

 

If even active DMOZ editors that discuss DMOZ in different forums don't know what is legal and what is illegal, what can be listed and what can not be listed; how do you expect the general public know that?

 

Genie, it's no wonder editors are confused. I don't know who wrote the following but think about it - it makes no sense:

So I'm an editor in Norway and I list a site that's legal in Norway and illegal in the US so I add the site to DMOZ. I later resign and a US editor takes over the category, OR a higher up editor from the US comes along and spots the new addition. What happens? Presumably, according to the above, it gets removed.

The guidelines are impossibly vague. There needs to be a common reference point, which I believe should be the hosting country and/or the head office location.

 

I've just checked and I find that child porn is not legal in Noway, though the approach is not quite the same as in the US.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article397638.ece

 

Minstrel - That section could use a little more clarity, but the intention is to protect editors from legal action if they list a site illegal in their home country, but which would be acceptable under ODP Guidelines. They should leave it for another editor. An example might be a website for a political group that is banned in a certain country, but not listed as illegal terrorists by the UN.

The Guideline is not intended to give permission to editors to list sites which are not acceptable under Guidelines (eg Warez) but which might be legal in some out-of-the-way spot they happen to be editing in, that hasn't got around to legislation on that specific issue.

 

But this is exactly what happens. 2257 is designed to protect the children, so they will not be exploited. It is not against porn or adult material and it only requires that there is a documentation for the age of any nude model on these sites.
DMOZ list many such sites without this declaration and editors excuse is that it is not illegal in the country that domain registrar lives, even if the site is clearly designed for US market and as in previous mentioned example the site is hosted in Florida.

 

I would advice you to read this 2257 law completely. You will notice that not all sites need this statement. If you think some sites must have this statement you can report them to the appropriate USA lawofficer. When they decide the site must shutdown we will remove the listing (as we do with all sites that are not active).
DMOZ editors have been told
- we are in no need to check sites against specific laws of certain countries
- which sites are illegal for us to list (specified by the lawyers of our sponsor/owner)
- we are always free not to list sites if we personaly don't want to (many editors don't want to list adult oriented sites) or if our local laws could get us into problems

If you have anything against adult oriented sites that to your opinion are illegal you can
1) take action against these sites themself and their owners
2) get into contact with AOL laywers and convince them DMOZ should not list such sites
But we as editors don't have the power to change these things.

 

Does this mean that DMOZ will continue to list illegal child porn sites unless that law enforcement catches up with them?

Are you claiming that AOL has instructed you to list sites without 2257 declaration as required by US federal law?

It is interesting that editors have no power to delete sites that are clearly illegal according to US federal law but they can delete the site of the guy who started this thread, even if he is licensed by government of Australia because an editor has found something about a court case through Google search.

 

Have you ever watched a dog chase it's tail?

 

mistrel, if my memory serves me correctly, that paragraph is intended for editors where listing the site would cause them (personally) legal problems.

Say an editor lives in an excessively restrictive country where listing, or even viewing, some types of sites is considered illegal, say China for example. The editor is in no way obligated to list something that could cause them jail time. [added: OK, genie was faster]

As for this thing about that US regulation about age documentation... DMOZ doesn't draw lines the way it is being presented in this thread. Whether or not a site abides by that regulation is their (that individual site's) responsiblity, not DMOZ's.

The way the law is written, a directory is not required to provide such documentation if they link to other sites that provide the content, it is up to the site that provides the adult content to make sure their records are in order or face the consequences. Before this law change, it was only up to the entity that created the adult content to keep the records and so called secondary providers were exempt.

As has been stated so many times, DMOZ is not the Internet police, nor are editors expected to be lawyers.

By the way, there are sites that are not technically breaking any laws, but DMOZ has decided to exclude them anyway because the intent of the site.

For example, there are many so called "pre-teen model" sites that while not actually braking any porno laws are sexually exploiting young girls. Dressing them provocatively and posing them suggestively with the intent to arouse. (Please, I hope no one is going to suggest that a 12 or 13 year old girl in a thong pointing their butt at the carmera has no "intent" and is just a normal part of that age's modeling portfolio) Such sites don't technically break any laws, but DMOZ chooses not to list them, because their intent is clear.

And this law people are throwing around, I would suggest there is a lot of misinformation being presented in this thread about how it protects children.

The law went into effect just a couple of months before the 2004 US Presidential election. Some would say this law has less to do with protecting children and more to do with limiting secondary providers of adult material and was intended to appeal to certain religious right wing fractions.

Age documentation laws have been on the books for a very long time. The change that happened in no way changed the age documentation requirements related to the creation of explicit materials but it did change who needed to keep such records as it relates to the distribution of adult materials. Before the law, the guy with the camera needed to keep records, after anyone distributing those images needed to also keep records.

Many in the adult industry had no problem with people "in the business" having their personal information but really didn't want any schmoe with a copy of dreamweaver and $10 a month to host a site to also have access to their personal info. Apparently this really angered a lot of people who basically lost their ability to operate adult sites.

This new law didn't change how records were keep in regards to the production of materials, it changed how easily it was to distribute them. So hundreds of sites that were legal before the summer of 2004 became illegal in the Fall, just in time for the November elections.

This idea that somehow any directory that lists sites that don't comply are somehow by extension now providing kiddie porn is, at a minimum, misinformed.

 

So what is it? Is DMOZ Internet police or not? You list illegal sites because DMOZ is not Internet police but you do not list legal sites because DMOZ is Internet police.

 

But it is much more fun when DMOZ editors chase each others tail.

 

Right, we are not the Internet police, we don't enforce one country or others laws, we list sites by editorial judgement and directory guidelines.

In DMOZ's editorial judgement, sites that seek to sexually exploit children, even though those sites are not breaking any actual law, should not be listed. So they will not be listed, regardless of what laws are not broken.

Also, DMOZ is not going to go into every governments' regulations to see that only sites with proper paperwork are listed. It will not be the police.

If some site has a title that seems to be a business name, DMOZ is not going to contact the government regulating agency to make sure they have the proper DBA paperwork on file.

If some government regulating body registers businesses, be they immigration or massage therapists, DMOZ is not going to make sure all listed sites have the proper paperwork. That is really the gov't angency and the site operator's responsiblity, not DMOZ's

The sites that DMOZ consider "illegal" are listed in the links to the guidelines above. "Examples of content that is illegal in most jurisdictions include child pornography; material that infringes on intellectual property rights; material that advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence) in specific instances; and material that is libelous."

Notice: content that is illegal in most jurisdictions is basically stating that sites that are generally (as in "across borders", as in "most places", as in "commonly") considered illegal will not be listed (it specificly makes no reference to any particular Country's laws).

If you see sites that are considered "illegal" by the DMOZ guidelines than you should let someone know... but constantly claiming there is child pornography while not being able to provide the actual url that has the kiddie porn does not make it so. Also, presenting a misinformed opinion as "fact" even though the law specifically addresses the point, doesn't change what the law says.

Having an adult site with people obviously in their 20's and 30's is not child pornography because they do not have the appropriate link stating they have the paperwork. The US law you keep throwing around is not suggesting such sites are providing child pornography, they are stating such sites are not in compliance with US age documentation regulations (paperwork). And if you really don't understand the difference between not having paperwork vs. providing sexually explicit material of children, there's not much I can do to help you understand.

Now you can quote me out of context as much as you like, but it still doesn't make you correct. It just demonstrates you will try very hard to manipulate whatever you can to prove a point built on a false premise.

 

DustyG

I think your posts is the best proof that according to editors the law is whatever that suits their needs in that minute. Illegal sites can be listed as long as they belong to editors and legal sites can be denied as long as they belong to editors competition.

The only rule in DMOZ is that what ever benefits the editors is acceptable, independent of what law and regulation states.

Thank you for proving my point.

 

It's quite clear that the only reason the editors continue to edit at DMOZ is that it's for their own benefit. [Other that perhaps a few insane editors that continue to edit when it causes them pain and suffering]

The problem is that many of the anti-DMOZ posters in here cannot possibly comprehend that the benefit -- for the vast majority of ODP editors, is that editing is fun for it's own sake. It's a hobby pure and simple. Some people go and play bridge, some watch TV, some collect stamps.

Nothing will convince the detractors that there are thousands of editors who have no ulterior motive, they are not in the SEO industry, they have no clients with web sites, many editors do not even have a web site of their own.

The vast majority of editors will never ever post in SEO forums, and do not even know these ongoing pointless threads exist. Other editors and non-editors post in these forums because:

• they want to try and educate about how DMOZ works
• they want to post hate messages since DMOZ will not list their site
• they like to be trolls
• they like to feed trolls to watch them dance
• they like to bait editors to see if they explode
• it's an experiment in human psychology

 

We agree.

Even if what you say was true, obviously it is not true in your case since you have made a business of selling DMOZ statue email.

 

You left out

• they are looking for new customers for their little side ventures