

Startup idea MyNeighborIsADrugDealer dot org  - utefan001

There are a lot of people that are trying to do their best to raise a family.  Having a neighbor that is a drug dealer is really frustrating when you just spent 200k+ on your new condo or house.<p>I think having a website that easily allows people to report drug dealing activity and browse would provide a significant amount of traffic.<p>Of course this would also allow drug users to find new dealers, but I think it would do more good than harm.  Besides, if people want drugs, they are not hard to get if you ask around. It would make sense to design the site to emphasize recent reports, not 3 year old reports.<p>I know a lot of people use greatschools.org to help decide where to buy a home.  MyNeighborIsADrugDealer.org would be helpful in the same way.<p>The reason I thought of this is my carpool buddy just caught one of her drug dealing neighbors (girl) urinating on her condo door mat.  They must think my carpool buddy is reporting them.  A site like this would put pressure on the police and elected officials to do something about her neighbor.
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pwhelan
A site like this would also be an enormous legal headache with libelous claims
and counter-claims flying around like gnats on a summer day.

If you are building it to sell to police, then I can see the value. However if
this is just a community board, then you are going to have trouble I think. Do
you have any idea how you would handle this?

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utefan001
One way is to make it clear that the site is not responsible for the user
submitted content, and allow users to request to have a post removed. If posts
are removed within 2 business days, that should be fair.

Also, the site does not need to be owned or operated within the USA.

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pwhelan
That is true but I am presuming you have some ties to Utah (being Ute fan and
all) thus I presumed that you live in the US which doesn't remove the fact
that you could still flirting with some big consequences.

The other problem is that saying you aren't responsible for user submitted
content doesn't mean you won't be targeted or be held liable in court.

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utefan001
From Utah, but live in 20879 now.

I appreciate your feedback. I could make the site similar to
<http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm> (submit a zip to see what I mean).

But break down reports by the US postal zip + 4. The user would see that a
"plus 4" area has several reports in the last 2 months, but would not see
report details, address, etc.

A link would invite police or public officials to see the details of the
reports. I won't bore you with the how to of verifying if someone is police or
not.

I think knowing that a certain zip + 4 area has a ton of reports is enough to
inform people that the area has problems.

