Mashups - scary mashups

For those of you who missed Isabel and my seminar at ISPCON or our presentation at the SW Soft Summit, Isabel has alerted me to another matter that will allow me to do some additional fear mongering. Amazon.com allows users to tag content on the company's website. In an article on the tags, Nicholas Carr noticed that some entries for DVD's contained tags with key words including "young girl" and "nymphette." Mr. Carr discovered that most of these tags had not been placed there by users, but rather had been imported by amazon from imdb the Internet Movie Database.

Amazon likely created a simple program to import the tags, maybe with, maybe without, imdb's consent. While amazon's likely intent was to simply enhance its site, and facilitate user communities, this matter highlights legal issues that can arise from new business ideas. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Companies need to determine how new business ideas will work in the real world, and possible risks they present. For example, while amazon may not have liability for the tags its users post, it likely is liable for the tags it creates, regardless of the fact that these tags come from imdb, and regardless of whether they were created by imdb's users. Given the history of litigation on the net, and law enforcement activity, it is not a stretch to imagine an enforcement action against amazon based on the fact that amazon has facilitated child exploitation communities on its website.

As I like to point out in my talks on this topic, you need to go beyond the standard question to your lawyers: "is this legal?" A lawyer would likely say "well do you have a license agreement with imdb? Does your distribution agreement allow you to post user comments? etc." Involving your lawyer in the entire process will likely surface issues you may not have realized were there, and which, honestly may carry a higher litigation risk for you than simply violating a distribution agreement. Besides, if you've engaged a lawyer who is interested in your business, they're likely to find this type of involvement more interesting and professionally fulfilling than simply reviewing a license agreement.