Fresh off their victory getting Azoogle to "donate" $1 million, the Florida Attorney General's office is getting ready to target Web publishers who have sold banner ads promoting deceptive mobile content services. They office assumes that publishers are complicit in the fraud because they "are aware that these advertisements are on these sites and know these advertisements are either false or misleading," according to Clickz.

Not content to just go after the people at the top, they are looking at the whole food chain, including ad networks, publishers, and affiliates. The burden is on the attorney general to prove that the other party knew that the advertisements were false or misleading. But that just means that a case brought up would be harder to prove, not that they will not take the path of the RIAA and file suits against high profile targets to make publicity and scare people into settling.

On one hand this is a bit disturbing. I don't like the idea that as a publisher I'm responsible (or even the target of a lawsuit) for what some network might show on my site. But I also would love to see the crap cleaned out of the industry.