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http://news.com.com/True+love/2010-1071_3-5591000.html

True love with a criminal background check
February 28, 2005, 4:00 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh

Herb Vest believes that true love should come with a criminal-background 
check.

Vest is the chief executive of True.com, an online dating service that 
pledges to verify whether your dream date is a convicted felon or, worse 
yet, already married.

"Although criminal-background screening is not entirely foolproof, we 
owe it to our members to provide a truly wholesome environment for 
online courtship," Vest said last year.

This would be an engaging but otherwise unremarkable business plan, 
except for one twist. Instead of competing head-to-head with his rivals 
in the business world, Vest has veered into the political world by 
pressing for new laws that would put True.com's competitors at a severe 
disadvantage.

Vest has managed to convince legislators in states including California, 
Texas, Virginia, and Michigan to sponsor bills that would target rival 
dating sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Spring Street Networks, 
craigslist and eHarmony...

...it would regulate far more than just dating sites. The California 
bill introduced last week covers any Web site offering "compatibility" 
or "social referral services"--a sweeping definition that encompasses 
everything from high-school reunion site Classmates.com to a matchmaking 
site for a tennis doubles tournament.

Under the California proposal, social referral services Friendster.com 
and Google's Orkut.com would be on the hook for fines of millions of 
dollars a day if they declined to post a warning similar to the one 
above on California members' ads or profiles.

[...remainder snipped...]

Posted by Declan McCullagh on Feb 28, 2005 in category economics

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