Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : Moderating opens you up to libel lawsuits

[ctrlbrk]

I run a vBulletin forum.

My forum is all about positive thinking, helping others. We do not allow rude/offensive posts. We work very hard to keep everything positive, and 99.9% of the time there are no issues.

But every now and then, a users post must be removed that doesn't conform with our guidelines. Sometimes it is just edited to remove a word or sentence. When it is edited or removed, the user is always notified.

Recently, there was an article on TheRegister about a blog operator who was sued because he actively moderated his blog. The story is here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04...mments_ruling/

There are other cases (United States, 1995) where one ISP was successfully sued (Prodigy), because they edited/moderated posts, while another ISP was not successfully sued (AOL) because they never moderated anything.

It is not acceptable for me to allow my site to turn into crap by not moderating. We perhaps moderate 1 out of 1,000 posts. But it prevents a chain-reaction, I have found that if you leave rude/offensive posts or allow them to remain, it invites more rude and offensive posts. It's a domino effect.

My question to the wise group of WHT'ers --- what can a forum operator like me do to protect themselves? I consider membership in my forum to be a privilege, not a right. It's like a restaurant owner who has the right to refuse service to anyone, right? But legally speaking, is there language that can be added to our terms and conditions that users must agree to, in order to protect myself?

Mike

[vj1q2]

Dont sweat it out. I read that theregister.co.uk article in depth and I am going to quote and give you an explanation. ok.

"A blog owner can avoid liability for user-generated content that appears on his site without being checked or moderated, the High Court has ruled. But fixing the spelling or grammar in users' posts could lose him that protection, it said."

- the operative word here is "fixing the spelling or grammar". Keep this in mind.

Now the article's summary:
1. A blog owner had a few articles.
2. a Libel comment was made in one of them, not by him.
3. instead of deleting that comment, he edited the spelling and grammar.
4. he got sued, for libel, from the affected party of the comment.

Now when you edit a comment or article you are basically putting your stamp on it, you are endorsing it, this is the ruling of the court. The blog owner was a little naive, foolish, didn't care or a bit of everything; he should've deleted the post not edited it, and most important, he changed the spelling and grammar and not the offensive, libel bit. Fail.

Coming back to your forum: If you delete offensive comments you can't be held responsible for the comment at all, in fact you are doing exactly what the judge thought the blog owner should've done. Read the ruling. But if you edit the offensive posts and leave the offensiveness there(this is important) you can be held responsible, because according to the court, editing content is equivalent to endorsing it.

So, important, don't edit a post and LEAVE the offensive bit in there. Don't correct spelling and grammar and leave the juicy bits there, edit out the offensive stuff.


I am not a lawyer, as yet. but have family background. dad's in gov, uncle's a lawmaker, etc etc. I am pretty sure of what I am saying and it'll hold in court, though you should'nt ever want to go to one.

[Mike - Limestone]

Ultimately, be careful with moderation actions. I think what sometimes hurts the defendants in these cases is that they had edited a specific post, thus making it clear that they had seen and reviewed the post, and yet chose to not remove it. That seemed to expose them to some liability.

-mike

[Hydro_Host]

I agree with Vj1G2.

Just delete the post. Surly no one can sue you for that (and win). After all it's your forum, your webspace.

Or you could simply formalise your terms and conditions..

As above my advise would be to just delete not edit.

[Encrypted]

I'm going to have to agree with everyone else here. Recently people have gotten in trouble (YouTube) for claiming that they are not responsible for what their users post (i.e. not moderating the content that users upload to their site). They (YouTube) of course lost that case, so as long as you delete the posts, rather than edit them, you're safe.

[FTN-Chris]

Originally Posted by Santric

I'm going to have to agree with everyone else here. Recently people have gotten in trouble (YouTube) for claiming that they are not responsible for what their users post (i.e. not moderating the content that users upload to their site). They (YouTube) of course lost that case, so as long as you delete the posts, rather than edit them, you're safe.

Actually the opposite happend YouTube won the case and Viacom lost "The long fight between Viacom and Google is partially resolved, with the U.S. District Court deciding that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor provision of the DMCA"

Source: Gizmodo

[fwaggle]

Originally Posted by Santric

I'm going to have to agree with everyone else here. Recently people have gotten in trouble (YouTube) for claiming that they are not responsible for what their users post (i.e. not moderating the content that users upload to their site). They (YouTube) of course lost that case, so as long as you delete the posts, rather than edit them, you're safe.

If you played a copyrighted work in the middle of your YouTube creation, and the rest of it is original, and YT edits the video to remove the copyrighted portion, then yes they open themselves up to being party to slander/libel.

The word "moderating" in the topic is misleading, it should say "editing" or perhaps "moderators editing". You will absolutely not be held liable for anything someone says if you simply delete it, but as others have said: if you edit it for spelling/grammar you are contributing to what the person is saying.

Now where YT might be caught up in this is them removing the audio from a video that features slanderous/libelous text in the video section. I'm sure they have that covered though.

It goes without saying: I'm not a lawyer.