The American Family Association, best known for its repeated violations of family values such as compassion and truthfulness, is once again on the warpath against intelligence. They simply cannot get over the fact that Yahoo refuses to proactively police its own network to make sure "objectionable" content is removed.

As a former abuse administrator with a legal background, I can provide the AFA with a clue as to why Yahoo won't do this. And, if the AFA understood rudimentary basics of American law, they would understand it themselves.

Simply put, once a person (or a company) undertakes a duty, the law expects them to do it consistently in a "reasonable" way. The consequence of not acting in a reasonable way (i.e. if Yahoo is able to remove Objectional Material A but overlooks removing Objectional Material B) is to face a lawsuit for negligence. After all, "negligence" is defined as "failure to act as a reasonably prudent person would under the same or similar circumstances." But, by not undertaking the duty to begin with, you cannot be sued for negligence for failing to do it properly.

At the ISP I worked for, we would rarely invoke the "we can remove any material we find objectionable" clause in our Terms and Conditions, even though we could have. I'm imagining it's the same way with Yahoo. It's something Internet providers like to have as a "backup" just in case they really need to step in. But it would take something pretty severe... because once you begin taking down one type of material, you inevitably provoke questions about removing type 2, and then type 3, etc. Pretty soon it becomes impossible to do the "reasonable" thing.

But, once again, I'm not surprised the AFA either does not understand this, or does but is deliberately misleading people by attributing indifference and hostility to Yahoo's lack of action. (On a related note, if the AFA is truly concerned about molestation and incest, shouldn't they first be trying to eliminate it among their own?

-Jason