As CMLP notes:

"Today, it's settled law that website operators are protected even if they change the content of users' postings. The leading case interpreting Section 230, Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327, 330 (4th Cir. 1997), held that “lawsuits seeking to hold a service provider liable for its exercise of a publisher's traditional editorial functions — such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content — are barred” (emphasis added). Since Zeran, numerous courts have reaffirmed the principle. The Ninth Circuit, in Batzel v. Smith, 333 F.3d 1018 (9th Cir. 2003), held that “minor alterations” did not cost a website operator his immunity when posting another's email message."

So what about the limits?

CMLP notes: "Section 230's broad grant of immunity does have its limits. Most critically, it won't help you if you change a comment in a way that creates defamatory meaning that wasn't there before."

So what about sites like The Salty Droid? What's going on there?

My guess is one of three things – after all the owner does claim to be a lawyer, so is likely relying on:

1) Truth As An Absolute Defense to Defamation – visit Electronic Frontier Foundation's guide on defamation here for details.

Of note is the following from their Blogger's Legal Guide:

"Is there a difference between reporting on public and private figures?

2) The "Acorn Blunder Effect"

OK. I don't know if there's a real name for this, but it is used by law enforcement at times…it has to do with the consequences of filing lawsuits that will lead to virtually unlimited discovery that  was discussed in CMLP's commentary on the lawsuit called "I Can Clearly See You're Nuts: Acorn's Insane Civil Suite" in which CMLP points out…

"The American system allows for liberal discovery requests for the parties in civil litigation. Now recall that ACORN has been the subject of numerous controversies, including claims of embezzlement and voter registration fraud. And the other parties in this case are FILMMAKERS and an ONLINE MEDIA OUTLET. Does ACORN really have nothing to hide?"

3) Some legal stuff about just spouting off "opinions"

There's some legal stuff about people just spouting off "opinions" not being held to the same standard as "defamation" that I don't really understand, so I don't have any great references for that.

So, when The Droid makes posts like StomperNet Shit Storm or Inside Dot Con Secrets – don't think for a moment he or she is doing it for fear of facing a "legal battle".  After all, it seems like it would be super-easy to take care of that through a lawsuit and formal discovery process.

The more likely scenario is that he or she knows that when it comes to the risks of such potential lawsuits – the odds are stacked in his or her favor as to what each party has to gain or lose.

Just as former World Chess champion Tigran Petrosian (The Iron Tiger) demonstrated time and time again:

"Often the best offense is a great defense"…and "he only attacked when he felt secure and his greatest strength was in defence." (Botvinnik)

Related:

• Reflections On StomperNet
• Jury Decides Against Plaintiff In Truth + Malice Internet Defamation Case
• StomperNet Exposed

Here's a link to a screenshot Strangely has provided:

Is Pacific WebWorks the next Google-Killer?

Here's what Strangely says about the screenshot:

"Q. So why the screenshot?
A. Check out to the right of the screendump. You’ll see a section labelled “Competitors Compensation”, meaning something that the Business Week website sees as a competitor for PWW. It then goes on to list the salaries of the CEOs etc of these “competitors""

You can read Strangely's full post here:

http://strangelyperfect.tv/5146/more-on-google-profits-and-pacific-webworks/

This may explain why Google is allowing Pacific WebWorks to continue advertising on Google Adwords despite the claims that PWW perpetuated "Internet scams on unsuspecting consumers using the trusted Google brand" and have engaged in a "Scheme To Defraud The Public Using Google's Marks".

It also may be the REAL reason Google wanted to co-operate with Pacific Webworks.

All this nansy-pansy nonsense about Google trying to track down the identities of the "John Doe" websites as a reason for entering an agreement with Pacific Webworks is an OBVIOUS cover-up.

The real reason OF COURSE because Pacific WebWorks is positioned to completely knock Google off it's rockers and become the next BIG search giant!!!

1. A gigantic ReadWriteWeb logo at the top of the page.
2. A little thing called an ADDRESS BAR which had readwriteweb.com in it

It got so bad that ReadWriteWeb had to put a huge message at the top of the screen stating:

"Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services."

And also included the following helpful "tip":

"For future reference, type "facebook.com" into your browser address bar or enter "facebook" into Google and click on the first result. We recommend that you then save Facebook as a bookmark in your browser."

A friend of mine thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen and demanded I view it immediately.

What he didn't know was how much me and many OTHER websites reporting on internet scams have already experienced this phenomenon.

We get people demanding refunds from us on products we are WARNING them about at an alarming rate…in other words the fact that MANY people DO NOT READ carefully at all while online is OLD NEWS to us.

I get emails and posts on the blog on a regular basis from people stating things like:

"IMMEDIATELY CANCEL MY MEMBERSHIP.
ANY ATTEMPS ON YOUR PART TO CHARGE MY CREDIT CARD WILL RESULT IN CRIMINAL CHARGES BEING FILED"

To which I respond:

"You're writing to the wrong website.
You're writing to a site that WARNS
people about scams and helps them
recover money.
 
What product are you talking about. Maybe
I can help you figure out what to do to get
your money back.
 
Paul Schlegel
Founder, WorkAtHomeTruth.com"

The site at IveTriedThat has experienced the same phenomenon and wrote an entire post about it here:

We are not running a Google scam. You're currently reading IveTriedThat.

In which they go on to explain:

"That’s right. People are landing on our website, reading our warnings to not give any money or information to these scammers, then they somehow are lead to believe that we are the ones operating these websites. How? I honestly have no idea. Maybe it was this line that was causing confusion: “Don’t do business with Google Treasure Chest and most certainly do not give them your private information."

Or how about the parody site MakeMoneyPostingALinkOnGoogle.com which is OBVIOUSLY a parody site since the Kevin Hoeffner at the site claims that he made 10 BILLION Dollars Posting A Link On Google…but STILL received the following comments:

"Joey here…Why do you promote such scams like this…You and Kevin are such scumbags. (You can see Kevin’s website @ http://www.blogspersonal.com/?1=pt&2=clks&3=1222#), which has similar information regarding Google.

ALL OF THIS IS A SCAM….DON’T DO IT. THEY WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE FORTUNE…..THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS…."

By the way, is there a corollation between people who don't pay attention online and those who type in GIGANTIC ALL-CAPS?

Anyhow, a few final tips…

Right now you are on the site WorkAtHomeTruth. Here are a few ways you can tell:

It SAYS SO in the Address Bar:

It SAYS SO in GIGANTIC letters at the top of the site:

Anyhow, thanks for visiting ReadWriteWeb.

• Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login

The bottom seven of this year's rankings, first to last, are Bank of America, Chase, Capital One, TD/Commerce, Fifth Third, Citibank, and in last place, HSBC."

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Related:

• 2/5/2010 Cuomo sues Bank Of America, Even As It Settles With The S.E.C.
• 1/25/2010 – No Mortgages, Still Foreclosed? Bank Of America Sued For Seizing Wrong Homes
• 1/15/2010 – Bragar Wexler Eagel & Squire, P.C. Announces Filing of Class Action Lawsuit on Behalf of Option Investors Against Bank of America – BAC
• 8/3/2009 Bank of America Settles Suit Over Merrill Deal
• 1/16/2009 – Bank Of America Receives Another 20 Billion from U.S. Bailout Fund

Related:

Closson Vs. Bank Of America Settlement Website – Bank Of America To Pay $35 Million:

"The lawsuit claims Bank of America encouraged its customers to use Bank of America debit cards and increased the number of fees charged to customers using Bank of America debit cards through the order in which such transactions are posted and the account balance information it provides. The lawsuit also claims that Bank of America authorizes debit card transactions that will result in overdraft fees; fails to warn customers that specific debit card transactions may result in overdrawn accounts; posts debit card and other transactions in high-to-low order; and provides account balance information to customers that is not current, accurate or as advertised. In addition, the lawsuit claims that Bank of America’s customer agreements are unconscionable, and that Bank of America does not provide customers with copies of account agreements until after they open their accounts"

Click here to visit ClossonSettlement.com

Related:

Bank of America wins appeal on overdraft fees

The California Supreme Court overturned a billion-dollar class-action award against Bank of America Corp. ruling that banks can collect overdraft fees from accounts in which government benefits intended for subsistence are directly deposited.

From The Los Angeles Times:

The California Supreme Court overturns a 2004 class-action award to Social Security recipients from whose accounts the bank took fees for insufficient funds.

"Requiring banks to dishonor checks can harm the customer's credit rating, result in the customer's incurring fees and affect the customer's relationship with merchants," Justice Carlos R. Moreno wrote for the court.

James C. Sturdevant, who represented the Social Security recipients said the court's ruling would punish the poor.

"They don't have a credit rating," he said. "These are the poorest of the poor. They live on $800 a month."

Click here to read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

"Related:

• Consumer complaints about Bank Of America at ConsumerAffairs.com

News3Insider.com at Compete.com

And although it's quite doubtful that the visitors to news3insider.com were well-targeted beyond a very broad demographic level, it's also probably true that the person or comany running the site along with the affiliate network(s) and vendors involved made a boatload of money through the deception.

If you aren't familiar with the phenomenon of fake news sites you can read about them here:

Are Fake News Sites The Next Gold Rush?

Just to get some perspective on the popularity of News3Insider I compared it against a couple of other real news sites as well as the Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission in Alexa:

News3Insider et al on Alexa

According to Alexa, for a brief time News3Insider was more popular than The Washington Post. Admittedly, Alexa's traffic data is notoriously unreliable compared to other traffic measurement tools such as Compete, but it's short-term trending information is fairly reliable and it looks like News3Insider.com is on the upswing now ready to take on more of America and maybe even the world's most popular newspapers.

Since Google has been banning sites like News3Insider from advertising via Adwords I thought it would be interesting to see where all of News3Insider.com's traffic was coming from:

News3Insider Upstream

According to the above chart a full 26.31% of traffic to News3Insider.com is being driven through the VAlueClick advertising network – which might be a good thing for them as it looks like they could use the money:

ValueClick 3 Month Stock Trend

 You may want to visit the the current ValueClick stock price chart here to see if they are faring any better at the time you read this.

Related:

• Are Fake News Sites The Next Gold Rush?

You can visit the giveaway event here:

Click to visit Giveaway 2010

 Here are the ones I particularly recommend based on your experience level.

If you are a complete newbie:

• Passions From Profits – Shawn Swinigan
• Web Business Basics for 2010! – Wacky Gals
• Niche Hunter Newbie Guide – Mike Newton
• Online Marketing for Newbies – Francois DuToit
• Train Me To Blog – Michael Blog

If you have at least some experience:

• The Simple Business Recipe – Paul Pavel
• $100 A Day System – Paul Counts
• How To Get Caught In Web Traffic – Andy Henry

Click to visit Giveaway 2010

Note: Many of the products come with private label rights – and are NOT the usual PLR CR*P.

But for anyone who's used Maltego at any level (even people like me fumbling around in the dark with the community edition) it is an incredible time-saver and continued development of the product is exciting.

Anyhow, you can see the "leaked" video here:

Maltego 3 leaked video at Social-Engineer.org

You can read the Social-Engineer.org team profiles here, including Andrew Mohawk who is Social-Engineer.org's Paterva rep and created a special edition of Maltego Mesh for Social-Engineer.

I used to do a lot of research that looks like this manually – Maltego hasn't automated everything I need, but it sure speeds up a vast number of processes.

Sure there are sites like downforeveryoneorjustme.com that will throw up a message like:

"It's not just you! http://skype.com looks down from here."

But what fun is that?

Much more fun to commiserate with all the fellow "Skype-Down" sufferers – PLUS you have the possibility of getting additional information.

Collecta.com is a great real-time search engine for this, but there are plenty of others. Here's what I found out that was MUCH more helpful than the simple (yet still useful) downforeveryoneorjustme.com:

Now I see that one guy is saying Skype is down in Brazil a couple times. It looks like it's working sometimes in parts of Europe.

And the nice thing is rather than trying to keep connecting to Skype I could just keep this running in a separate minimized window – or better yet, some players in the real time search arena such as Google (a late-comer) will be offering real-time search interfacing on the desktop.

You can read about Google's plans here.

Nambu (still in private beta) also announced early in 2009 that they would provide a desk-top application.

Being a late-comer to real-time search myself I'm sure there is all kinds of useful functionality already built in that I'm completely aware of.

Short List of Real Time Search Engines:

• Collecta.com
• OneRiot.com
• StinkyTeddy.com
• Trackle.com
• Scoopler.com

Of course there are also the old "Twitter Real-Time Search" engines which seem quaint by current standards.

• Wowd.com

Note, I'm not an attorney, so get your own legal advice on how to implement your own material connection disclosure.  I did however provide a tremendous amount of documentation to the FTC on one of their Operation Shortchange cases (FTC v. In Deep Services) that involved disclosures (although not affiliate disclosures) and spent a significant amount of time on the phone with one of the senior litigators there (and ultimately agreed to testify in the case). 

I also had significant involvement in helping consumers file complaints and recover money (at no charge to them) on two of the other Operation Shortchange Cases, including Google Money Tree (National Consumer's League used a lot of my write-up and blog discussion here).

Again, I'm not an attorney, though. Also, this only applies to links within your OWN site – it doesn't apply to affiliate links on forums, social media sites, etc.

So here's what we've done (we are still in the process of moving items to the store):

First of all, at the top of product reviews now we do the following:

1. Explain the reviewers connection to WorkAtHomeTruth (i.e. Product reviewer for WorkAtHomeTruth)
2. Immediately disclose that the product is "Available At The WorkAtHomeTruth Store" – i.e. it is OUR store and it generates income for WorkAtHomeTruth - whether from products we own or ones we recommend as an affiliate.

You can see an example of how this works here:

http://store.workathometruth.com/atomic-blogging-review/

You'll also notice that based on the header you are clearly in a "store section".

Plus when you click on any of the links on the review you have to go through the product page at the STORE to buy (through an "Order Now" button).

Here are all the problems and affiliate issues this solution solves.

1.  Inline disclosure of material connection in a way that is natural. Many affiliates have started putting affiliate link disclosures after every single link they post in their blog. As

By having a "store" section there is clearly a material connection between the site owner and the product they recommend.

I've actually found it odd that Brian Clark's disclosure for the book Desperate Buyer's Only here has often been hailed as a great example of affiliate disclosure. It's OK. But there are definitely problems.

First of all, the disclosure comes at the END of the review AFTER other non-disclosed affiliate links within the text. Anyone who's ever tracked clickthrough rates on their affiliate reviews knows that usually a decent percentage of the clickthroughs happen in links before the end of the review. So a person clicking on one of those links may have no idea about the affiliate relationship.

Admittedly this is "nitpicking" since the FTC clearly states that they evaluate the "entire mosaic" of the advertising message as well as what a "reasonable consumer" is in the circumstances not to mention a whole host of other factors the FTC would look at.

However, the system I recommend puts the disclosure at the TOP of the review and inline on EVERY link (which is NOT an easy task if you have an existing large site – we are STILL moving a lot of items into the store).

Some might argue that doing so disrupts "the flow of the copy". That was an old argument made about affiliate disclosures.

Obviously, there needs to be more test data to know for sure. But if the OTHER big argument affiliate's kept making a few years ago about why they didn't use disclosures is true – namely that "our readers know we are affiliates and they are loyal followers and they don't care" – then what harm can there be in including a simple disclosure at the TOP of the review?

If they are such raving fans and don't care about your affiliate status they won't care if you disclose at the TOP of your review will they?

2. Moving the visitor through a store makes it hard for them to "miss the point".

I found the following statement at Shawn Collins' AffiliateTips.com curious:

"By the way, I put up an affiliate link disclosure on my blog (with a link in the header) quite some time ago, and nobody – literally nobody – ever goes to that page."

Sure, that could mean that nobody cares about affiliate disclosure statements. It could also point to that being a bad way to disclose affiliate relationships.

In fact who is best able to determine how effective a disclosure policy? Why the person controlling the site analytics that can give data as to the effectiveness. I was unable to dig up the reference, but I seem to recall this being discussed in the FTC workshop on negative option marketing in 2007.

Marketers spend an enormous amount of time and resources testing copy and monitoring it via analytics. So to apparently come to the conclusion that "nobody cares" about disclosure statements without testing various placements seems a bit disingenous.

3. I can make natural recommendations on my blog and send them through a review that then sends them through a store.

If you control your blog one issue that comes up is people asking you for advice about products.  I do recommend products that don't benefit me materially (although they do increase my "trust factor" so as Jack Humphrey's points out in this discussion typically linking to anything off site does involve some sort of self-serving principle).

But I can also link them to a review on the site that discloses the affiliate relationship at the top – and then moves them through the site store.

To me this seems to be more akin to a person's natural buying process in the offline world – they go to a consultant/sales person who then analyzes their situation and ultimately receives value (usually money) in exchange for consulting that person and finding a solution for them based on their circumstances.  (As an aside: non-individualized "Top 10 Lists" can still serve some purpose if they are based on overall site demographics – admittedly not a perfect solution).

Not only that, most people aren't used to bying through a "compensated affiliate link" – but they are used to buying through a store.

It's just seems more natural to have a store in almost every conceivable way.

This one will be for many of you:

"Business school students who are getting ready to find a job may feel both excited and a little apprehensive. This is normal, as the transition for which you’ve been working has suddenly arrived and you may wonder where to find that job. Luckily, there is a wealth of opportunities for job searching online for business students. The list below provides everything from job sites just for business students to more general job sites, social networking sites for business students and those in the business community, internships for those wanting to bridge the gap between school and career, and resources for finding a job in the business community."

OnlineCollege.org has just published a list of sites that can be helpful for business school students currently looking for a job.

Click here to read their article 100 best job sites for business school students