Suing The Sites

The lawsuits are flying here in the U.S. as usual. But the target of the latest flurry of them is a relatively innocent one- online dating sites. That's right. After looking for love in al the Internet places and failing to find it, frustrated (or perhaps greedy) litigants are dragging dating and pen pal sites into court with charges of : deceptive practices".
So why target those sites, which are mostly honest and simply avenues for people to meet. It's because a recent report (By Jupiter Research) said that the U.S. Internet personals market had revenues of $473 million dollars last year. That makes it the largest moneymaker or online content, and a prime target for people locking for a nice payoff.
The best example of the sue the match maker site mentality is a recent case involving the biggest dating/pen pal site, Match.com. Someone named Michael Evans filed a suit last week in a U.S. District Court with allegations that Match.com sent a female employee out on a date with a male subscriber as "date bait" to keep him signed up. It is a ridiculous allegation, given that Match.com has over 15 million users.
To think that it has enough employees to date bait all those subscribers is absurd. Match.com has denied the charge and even obtained an affidavit from the woman Michael dated to show she never has worked for the company. Yet, Michael probably thinks he can extort a pay off from the site, given that it does not want the negative publicity of a lawsuit that contends it is devious. Another charge made by disgruntled users of the sites is that the sites create fake profiles to entice a user to sign on with the site. I find that hard to believe too. So many people want to communicate with others for romance or otherwise, that most of the sites have enormous participation rates and need not create phony profiles to "pad" the pools of users. Surely anyone who has been on line has used one of those sites or just looked at them. I think the real reason a user might feel there are phony profiles listed is that the system used on the sites for responding to a person creates that allusion. the pay-to-respond model is the one most sites use. that is, you can look at the ladies or guys, read their profiles (and lust over them) but you can not send a message to them unless you are a paying member.
So it's not clear who is a member and who isn't. Thus, if you read and responded to 100 profiles but got only one response, you might conclude that 99 of the profiles were fake. but they weren't. The 99 who didn't answer weren't full subscribers, and thus could not respond to your message. Also, the profiles are self written. That leads to the buck toothed man claiming he is a Brad Pit look-a-like or the dumpy lady saying she has Catherine Zeta Jane's body. So, when the two meet there is obvious upset with the site for "misleading them".
I think the sites are being unfairly charged in these cases. Those suits has given me the idea that I could sue if you don't respond to my blog. Awwwwwwww It's no use...I should forget that....no judge would agree that I am worth writing to anyway...sigh
Wow! Those Catholics in Italy are getting frisky. As a life-long Roman Catholic I must say it was quite a surprise to read of the "naked lady" ad that just appeared in the leading Italian Catholic newspaper, Famiglia Cristina. And it's caused quite a storm of protest among the more traditional Catholics there. It seems that Farniglia has published a photograph of a naked woman as part of an advertisement for a bathroom ventilation system.
The picture shows the naked bottom of a lady in a shower, but that's enough to shock some Catholics who read the usually conservative Famiglia. In the past Farniglia has shown underwear ads and sexy swimsuit pictures with it's normal current affairs content that includes things like cooking tips, travel information and religious advice. But this time even the Vatican is shocked by the naked butt photo. Well, in my view a little more skin and a little less dogma might be what the Catholic Church needs to get back it's parishioners.