Josh Smith Online

I found this moronic exchange today in which MobiTV was trying to remove Howard Forums aka the best site for phone information, from the internet. The legal counsel of MobiTV was upset that a user on HoFo had posted directions to a publicly available url which enabled users to watch MobiTV content for free. MobiTV was upset that their laziness had been found out and exploited and decided that they should censor the internet, at least their legal department did.

The story does have a happy ending in that the president of MobiTV responded stating,

Howard, great catching up today. Again, we’re big fans of the sight and our intention was never to bring your entire sight down or to “censor the Internet” like we’re being accused. The irony is that is quite the opposite type of company we are and as one of the leaders in new media, we couldn’t be more supportive of the rights of sights like yours. Please know that our first priority is always to fix any security issues with our system and we’re doing that. Additionally, we also have a responsibility to our content and carrier partners to reduce the impact of any breaches to the system once they occur and that was really the basis for the correspondence you had with our legal team.

I am glad to see a reasonable end to this but companies need to step off the lawsuit trigger. Have this conversation FIRST and accept some responsibility for your own actions.

Tags: censor | hofo | howardforums | internet | legal | mobiTV | president