Poor Microsoft; even the companies they buy can't seem to stay out of court. Faithful viewer Steve Pissocra pointed us towards a ZDNet article detailing the Redmond Giant's latest legal scrape: Boathouse Row, a web site that sells official NFL cheerleader calendars and posters, is suing Microsoft because LinkExchange allegedly started issuing banner ads for porn sites. The unwanted ads, which appeared on Boathouse Row's web site and linked to sites offering child pornography and other "lewd sexual and illegal material," are expressly forbidden by LinkExchange's own terms of service; the company actually claimed that the appearance of porn ads "was not possible." But when faced with screenshots of the banners appearing on the litigant's site, they changed their tune, claiming that they "can't be held responsible for sites that change their topic or focus after the initial evaluation." Hmmm.

But first, some background for the uninitiated. LinkExchange has been around for a long time, and basically it works like this: say you've got a web site and you'd like to promote it, but you don't have any cash to spend on advertising. When you sign up with LinkExchange, you add code to your site which references LinkExchange's ad servers, so your visitors are seeing banner ads for other LinkExchange members' sites. In exchange, your own banner gets shown on other sites, and theoretically, people find out about your site and you get some "free" advertising. Neat idea, right? Microsoft thought so, too, which is why they bought the company last November, in the classic Microsoftian manner. But we don't think they expected to receive a lawsuit as part of the bargain.

Anyway, Boathouse Row claims that the presence of unwanted pornographic ads actually cost them business, once the Oakland Raiders found out. The Raiders had a sales contract with Boathouse Row, which they amended once news of the porn banners reached them-- hence, the lawsuit. So, chalk up another task for the Microsoft legal team, who, we suspect, is probably glad to get a little work not related to antitrust issues. The individual lawyers in Redmond are probably falling all over themselves begging for the porn banner case just for a change of pace.