Access Liability on the Internet
I was going to declare today, December 1, 2009, Minizoom Appreciation Day (M.A.D.). MiniZoom has been very good to me this year, and we’re just about to wrap up three years of car-owner bliss. Also, I had her parked under a tree over the weekend and she came out drizzled with globs of honey-thick, clear tree sap (pretty!), to which road grime is now sticking (not pretty). Besides, I’ve never (not once!) dusted her interior, and three years of dust shows. So, today was going to be M.A.D.
But then I woke up cold. So I went Yahoo! to check today’s weather before I went out to wash my car. I should point out that I was a holdout, resisting Yahoo!’s new page layout for as long as that link at the bottom of the page existed and would let me. But as of November 16th, or so, the site quit giving that option.¹ So I see the same ugly Yahoo! home page, with all of the dynamic elements that I accidentally activate by simply moving my cursor across the screen, that you do. (Gawd, I hate the new Yahoo!.) Anyway, I went there and moused-over the word “Weather” in the left sidebar menu, and the big dynamic weather information box popped up. At least it worked as expected/desired. So now I had this view (location changed to protect the innocent me):
If you clicked on that image to see the full view (or if you have extremely good vision/screen resolution, or if you went to Yahoo! in another tab to play along at home), you will note the word “Disclaimer” beneath the very basic weather forecast. Really? Being the lawyerly type that I am, I clicked on that word. Should you do the same, you would find that a box pops up in the whitespace below the word, and in this box the following passage:
This content may come from external websites and may not conform to your laws. You are fully responsible for your access to and use of this application and content.
And that brings me to the point of this post. Accessing the information on Yahoo!’s main page is easy to the point that I find it nearly impossible to not activate one of the dynamic headings at least once per visit (I am trying to learn to be more careful with my cursor movements just to view the “headlines”², but I still slip up relatively frequently).
Let’s pretend for a moment that the heading “Weather” actually says “Pornography”, and when a visitor mouses-over the word, an explicit picture pops up. And let’s pretend a visitor from a sexually-repressed locality with obscenity laws, such as one might find in the southern United States, accidentally accesses that explicit picture. Whose fault is that? Yahoo!’s disclaimer says it is the fault of the visitor, not Yahoo!’s. I say I have unintentionally viewed too many of those dynamic links to be held accountable for the content contained therein.
There is no porn (that I know of) on Yahoo!’s main page, so I don’t think I’m breaking any laws (local or otherwise) for my slips-of-the-cursor. But if I were breaking laws, what could I possibly do about it, short of avoiding Yahoo! altogether? Is that what Yahoo! wants? For us to stop visiting?
I should just be glad I don’t live in China.
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¹ I have just discovered the “Page Options” drop-down in the upper-right corner of the page, under which one may find “Switch to Compact View”. If you hate the big dynamic view as much as I do, I strongly recommend utilizing this option!
² A blog post for another day: I’ve noticed that I habitually go to Google News for real news, but I check out Yahoo!’s headlines for the weird stuff or entertainment news (I’m trying to fit in). I recently realized that I am more likely to share a headline I found on Yahoo! with friends, but more likely to learn something important at Google News.
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:42 am
Yahoo’s news used to be powered by Reuter’s, but now I don’t know. I rarely go to the main Yahoo page since I have a My Yahoo page. And truly, I rarely use even that except to access little used bookmarks from work (where I can’t install Yahoo Toolbar which is mainly worthless but does offer handy access to your Yahoo bookmarks).
I’m not a fan of in-your-face dynamic elements. They strike me sort of like your over-decorated government office building from yesterday(?). Just because you can doesn’t automatically mean you should.
But I get that that’s not the point. All I can guess is that this is Yahoo’s version of the CYA game, which has become de rigeur in these modern times. I was just having this discussion with someone else last night. If there is any point upon which the GOP and I can find a vestige of common ground it’s in the area of frivolous lawsuits. Of course my definition of frivolous is probably vastly different from theirs (“Truly Ridiculous” v. “Costs Big Corporation Lots of Money”) but I think most people (other than trial lawyers at least) would agree that litigation has gotten waaay out of control. And so we find things like this disclaimer — which really ought to be unnecessary.
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Necesito hacer un pago en mi poliza. (translated: I need to make a payment in my policy.)
January 26th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
[...] two months ago, I wrote a post about the trap Yahoo! had set for us on their homepage. In “Access Liability on the Internet” (December 1, 2009), I discussed the new dynamic Yahoo! page with roll-over features which [...]