By Chris Taylor

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-890405.mp3

Central City, KY – Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway is in talks with the corporate office of California-based news and information aggregator Topix.com. It is the 280th most trafficked site in the U.S. according to leading web analytics firm Alexa. Conway is asking Topix to review how it polices anonymous user comments on its website, which he says brings numerous consumer protection concerns. Chris Taylor speaks to one Western Kentucky resident bringing a complaint forward after he and his family were targeted on the website.

The highly trafficked URL's success comes from being one of the first large-scale websites to really break into smaller community markets. The site's Forum and Polls section seems to function like a local bulletin board. Anyone can comment anonymously and there's little, if any, regulation. This is where the story of 64-year-old Muhlenberg County resident Jackie Winters comes in. Winters says his family has been the target of damaging and slanderous accusations. He says it all started with people commenting on his son, Dennis's divorce.

Winters- You've always got people that's gonna talk and at first they just started saying things that you know maybe were just their opinion, and it went on for about a week and you know just different things and then they started pulling my family and her family in on it.

Winters says a friend alerted him several weeks into the online conversation about one especially troubling post.

Winters- Angel 2008 anonymous proxy said I was raped by Dennis Winters when we were both young. His family paid off my father to help him buy his house and my parents convinced me not to take it to court.' Well, needless to say it flew all over me, because it was nothing but a lie.

Winters says his son had tried to use the site's abuse flagging procedures, but with no luck. He says instead he was directed to pay a fee to take the comments down. Instead of paying the fee, Winters contacted the Central City Police, who pointed him to the County Attorney, who recommended the Sheriff, and he eventually wound up calling the office of Attorney General Jack Conway with two requests:

Winters- One was to see if they could track down this IP address so I could finally give them their day in court and the second was that if Topix could not monitor things like this that was slanderous, then can they not have it taken off of the internet.

Topix has declined to comment to WKMS, but CEO Chris Tolles recently defended his company's terms of service to the Lexington Herald-Leader, saying consumers have three ways to seek review of a post: they can flag it for abuse, file feedback with specific information on its contents, or pay a priority review fee to jump a four day review backlog. Attorney General Conway directed his cyber crimes division to put this to a test.

Conway- Investigators went onto the Topix site; tried to remove posts, tried to do what Topix claimed under its own Terms of Service would be done, and they were ineffective. I can tell you with complete confidence that it is wholly insufficient and the website, in our opinion, is designed to direct people to this $19.99 priority review fee.

Murray State University Communications Law Professor Dr. Kevin Qualls likens Topix's forums to JuicyCampus, which was sometimes referred to as a virtual bathroom wall of university-centric, college gossip. Though JuicyCampus is no longer online after failing financially, he says many sites are prevalent with anonymous abuse targeting anything from lawyers and law enforcement to even professors like himself. Despite internet trolling and anonymous abuse becoming somewhat commonplace on the web, Qualls says people seem to be more affected at the local level.

Qualls- If someone says something ugly about you and someone five states away reads it, well okay that hurts, but when it's your own community that's reading it, it's no different than painting graffiti on the downtown building for someone to read.

Dr. Qualls says the case against Topix will be interesting if it ever makes it to court.

Qualls- The Communications Decency Act, which is part of the Telecom Act of '96, provides safe harbor for internet service providers. And what that means is, they are immune from civil liability for the torts committed by their users.

Qualls says the term internet service provider used to be thought of only as companies who provide access to the internet, but now its definition has grown to include any provider of online services. Citing such a defense may mean Topix won't be held liable for what its users do on its site, even if it's defaming or abusive, but the Decency Act doesn't offer protection if they're found violating their own terms of services. Qualls says just because the service provider cannot be held liable in civil court

Qualls- There's nothing to keep the Attorney General from bringing criminal charges against them, should there be any criminal activity.

Qualls points out an interesting case last year in Illinois.

*Qualls- The Cook County Sheriff's Department brought charges against Craigslist for the facilitation of prostitution. Craigslist asserted a Section 230 defense. This was a criminal charge, yet the Illinois court allowed them to have that safe harbor provision apply to the criminal law. That was Illinois; maybe things will be treated differently in Kentucky.

Attorney General Conway says he'll use every legal means at his disposal to bring about change on Topix.

Conway- To make certain that they monitor their website, that our children aren't being harmed, that slanderous things are not going on there and that they're not trying to extort a priority review fee in order to get damaging words off of Topix.

Back to Jackie Winter's story: Just days after he called Conway's office, the thread disappeared from the site; but he says the damage is already done.

Winters- In your mind you'd still have that little doubt. You know they could have done that ' It's not over, it never will be over. Right or wrong, lie or not a lie; it was put in people's minds, so it's there.

And what's next for Topix in Kentucky? Jack Conway won't comment any further on the case. He says his office is currently in verbal negotiations this week with high-ranking Topix executives.

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Note: Dr. Kevin Qualls acknowledges he mistakenly mentioned "Facebook" instead of "Craigslist" during the interview and apologizes for the error.