

Website where anyone can post anyone's information to label them as a predator - denzil_correa
http://www.potentialpredators.com/

======
kadjar
This is extortion.

There might be a way to fight them through this, if you claim that the poster
didn't have the right to grant them the license:

6\. Proprietary Rights/Grant of Exclusive Rights

By posting information or content to any public area of
POTENTIALPREDATORS.COM, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant
that you have the right to grant, to POTENTIALPREDATORS.COM an irrevocable,
perpetual, fully-paid, worldwide exclusive license to use, copy, perform,
display and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative
works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and
to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

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scott_s
The first question in their FAQ addresses suing them, to which they claim they
are immune because of the Communications Decency Act, specifically, the part
that provides immunity to ISPs and forums:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act#Sect...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act#Section_230)

I wonder, however, if the law cannot distinguish between, say, Hacker News and
Potential Predators. Hacker News as an entity is a free-form discussion site,
with no particular agenda other than being a forum for discussion. Potential
Predators is not a discussion site, and it has a clear agenda. Reasonable
people will assume that HN itself does not endorse individual comments. But
reasonable people _may_ assume that Potential Predators endorses individual
submissions that they post. I can easily draw a distinction between the two.
But I'm not sure if the law does.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that they _do_ endorse individual
submissions. I think that puts them closer to libel laws that apply to
newspapers. It would be absurd for, say, the NY Times to try to use the CDA to
defend itself from a libel suit by saying, hey, we just provide a forum for
news articles; we're not responsible for what our reporters put up here.

That may be a crucial distinction, in fact: at the NY Times, the person who
writes the article does not post it. It goes to an editor, and then presumably
to someone on the technical side. I wonder if Potential Predators curates the
submissions, and if they do, if that effects their responsibility in any way.

If grellas is around, I would love to hear his take.

------
flexxaeon
> REMOVE PROFILE > One Time Payment Of $99.95...

This is wrongfully brilliant.

~~~
scott_s
It's more commonly pronounced _extortion_.

~~~
terhechte
Like a witch hunt with bribes

------
lutusp
> Website where anyone can post anyone's information to label them as a
> predator

Perhaps, but not publicly. If the Website listed someone as a predator on the
basis of an anonymous tip and no other substantiation, they would wind up in
court very quickly.

This is obviously a gimmick site, not likely to uncover any real predators.
Imagine the thought process of someone who discovers a real predator -- "What
now? Maybe I should call the police? No, wait, I could go to that cool website
-- besides, the police don't care about child molesters."

Not plausible. It's someone's publicity stunt, not a real public service.

~~~
scott_s
_Perhaps, but not publicly. If the Website listed someone as a predator on the
basis of an anonymous tip and no other substantiation, they would wind up in
court very quickly._

Did you look? Profiles of people are active. I think you are correct in
dismissing it as not an honest public service. But rather than being a stunt,
I think it's a scam to make money.

~~~
lutusp
> Did you look? Profiles of people are active.

Yes, and if the listed people were real, the site would be offline in a matter
of days. Who is going to stand for being misidentified as a child molester
online?

Unless, of course, the people listed really are molesters/predators/whatever,
in which case they're already listed on the official sites.

Either way, this site is some kind of scam -- we agree on that.

------
tzs
Some ideas to fight them:

Track down the owners of the site, their spouses, their children, their
parents, their siblings, their friends, and their neighbors. Submit entries
for all of those people. If they come down, resubmit them, perhaps with
variations to get around any blocking the do.

The idea is to get them to take measures to keep those people off the site. If
they do that, you've then got an argument that they aren't simply neutrally
taking anonymous submissions from the public, but are taking an active
editorial role in deciding what gets accepted. The idea is to try to get them
to be seen as the publisher of the material, rather than merely as a service
provider letting their users publish.

\---------

Set up a site that crawls their site and grabs all the information for the
people listed.

Your site essentially mirrors Potential Predator, citing Potential Predator as
the source of the information. However, your site does not remove the
information of people that have paid to have their information deleted from
Potential Predator, meaning they still show up in search results.

People who paid Potential Predator to be removed see that it was not effective
in getting them out of search results, and charge back the $100. Potential
Predator gets buried in charge back fees and goes out of business.

\---------

Turn them into a file sharing site, by submitting images that have MP3 files
steganographically embedded. Then have the copyright owners sue them. The
Communications Decency Act provisions they are hiding behind do not work, I
believe, when the material violates IP laws.

\---------

Hit them with DMCA takedown notices for the photos.

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thraxil
Worth noting that a lot of the profile pics in the search results are NSFW.

------
olog-hai
Another bit of scumminess: When you click to delete a profile, you are taken
to a page where you're expected to enter credit card details. Despite the
presence of a RapidSSL badge, this page is _not_ encrypted. Even forcing https
into the URL doesn't work.

~~~
tzs
Verified. The credit card submission just does an AJAX transaction, over plain
HTTP, to 37.46.127.180. My tcpdump revealed my plain fake credit card details
sailing over the wire completely unencrypted.

I've dropped a note to RapidSSL about this.

------
droithomme
No doubt they have a list of names in there that they draw a red line through
after vigilantes kill them.

