New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram subpoenaed JuicyCampus.c...

portrayed unflatteringly, especially as having been drunk or promiscuous. The state is investigating the site for Consumer Fraud Act violations via “unconscionable commercial practices and misrepresentations to users.” The subpoena asks JuicyCampus parent Lime Blue how it picks campuses to cover, how it verifies participants’ school affiliations, and how it enforces parental-consent forms it requires for posters under 18. Contributors must agree to not post content that is “unlawful, threatening, abusive, tortious, defamatory, obscene, libelous, or invasive of another’s privacy,” all standard terms of use. JuicyCampus terms also empower the site to remove content for violating its policies, to report users to the authorities for illegal activity, and to respond to “lawful subpoenas.” But the site “apparently lacks tools to report or dispute [prohibited] material,” the attorney general’s office said. “Report abuse” and similar links are usually prominent on social networking sites. Milgram also subpoenaed online ad network Adbrite, which serves ads on JuicyCampus, asking how JuicyCampus represented itself to Adbrite, as exemplified by the types of ads and keywords requested by the site. Google, which used to provide AdSense ads to JuicyCampus, also got a letter from the state asking about that prior business relationship. JuicyCampus.com seemed to be struggling under a flood of traffic when we checked Thursday afternoon. It told users that the site was being upgraded and some features had been disabled because “we are SOOO popular!” A JuicyCampus spokeswoman said the site wouldn’t comment on the New Jersey action, declining to say whether the company has fielded inquiries from other governmental offices, college administrations or student governments. JuicyCampus sent an automatic e-mail response to our inquiry with a list of FAQs that don’t appear on the site, apparently written to address legal questions recently raised. JuicyCampus said it blocked crawling of its site by search engines so mentions of people wouldn’t surface in search results. It clarified that its terms don’t “obligate us to investigate the factual basis of every post” and, as a result, decide whether any post is defamatory. If a “court of competent jurisdiction” rules that a post is liable for defamation, JuicyCampus will remove the post, the e-mail said. Readers should “shift your point of view” and not assume all posts are true, it said. The e- mail linked to an FAQ on blogging and defamation law provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Anonymity online has recently been the target of Kentucky legislation. HB-775, by Rep. Tim Couch, would require “interactive service providers” such as sites, blogs and message boards to have users register their legal names, addresses and valid e-mail addresses as a “precondition” to using the service. Users would be identified at least by their “registered legal name” on any content they post, and providers would have to create a “reasonable procedure” by which others could request the personal information of users who post “false or derogatory information” about them. Providers would be fined $500 for first violations and $1,000 for any others.