rbacal - 6:44 pm on Aug 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

I rarely comment on such issues, but as a list owner AND user who has been actively involved in encouraging yahoogroups to enforce their terms of service over the last years, I had to.

The problem isn't limited to nasty messages. IMHO, the real problem relates to yahoogroups apparent indifference or inability to enforce its terms of service on almost all issues.

Over the last two years, a particular yahoogroup has infringed on copyrights, forged messages under various real people's names, spamming to get people to subscribe, and a host of other sins, clearly linked to the owner of the list. The list now has over 4,000 members, so this isn't a minor list that nobody sees.

Literally dozens of people have complained about this list to yahoogroups. In total probably over 200 complaints sent to them. Most don't receive a reply or trouble ticket number. We've even tried phone calls and faxes to senior execs.

That's fairly typical. So, while I'm somewhat accepting of nastygrams, the real problem lies with yahoogroups continued inaction on almost any complaint.

I was a list owner before yahoo bought egroups, and I can say that in those days, the egroups staff were exceedingly responsive to TOS violations.

If this law suit encourages them to improve their responsiveness regarding illegal activities to TOS activities, then I hope they get pinned to the wall.