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This is basic law for running a forum from UK

ASL Member Founding Member Meddelande #13923 Svar stängda

To clarify what I am about to say, I am not a Lawyer, I base what I am about to say after spending the last 10 years running a forum firstly that I owned and after I sold it to a large media company running them as community manager...

Over the years we have recieved quite a number of letters from lawyers regarding comments made on our forums.

The legal advice OUR lawyers have given us is as follows ( abit long winded)

Please note this is based on English law,

As yet not a lot as far as forums has been defined in English law, as the way it works is by case law, e.g. someone has to get sued to make the precedent that following cases either follow or overturn... So the law on Slander and Libellous comments on forums at this time basicaly follows the same laws that apply to Newspapers.

1. As the publisher of the comments you can be liable for damaging comments on your forums, alongside the person that actually wrote them.
However you do have a number of defences

a) That the comments are true.. so if the poster provides you with proof of what he has posted , then even if it is damaging then your OK ( as long as the court agrees with your proof of course)

b) The comments cant be proved but are in the public interest to be discussed -Reynolds Defence ( good luck trying to get away with that one unless you have a very good lawyer)

c) You were unaware of the comments ( doesnt work if you have posted on the thread, or more importantly even if a moderator or other forum member who has the ability to edit the post has posted on it)

d) You removed the comments in a reasonable amount of time, on becoming aware of them or being informed of their presence ( "Reasonable amount of time has not yet been defined in UK Law)

Long and short of the above d) is your only realistic option to ensure you dont get sued once informed of damaging content.

In over 10 years of running our forums I get two to three letters from company solicitors a month requiring content to be removed

If the forum was run from the united states then who ever was admin of the forum would not be held accountable for anything posted. As the is a law called "the safe harbor rule/law" which prevents anyone being held accountable

Kommentarer

So the long and the short of it is that it has to be proved if the comment is true or not. So if Nikki is not happy with her name being on a list of bars that people think are making a noise then she can take the person who posted it and the site owner to court, she then has to show that it was not true that she was making a noise. MY GOD how long and how much is that going to cost and in what country does she take the action. I see what Steve is saying now.

ASL Member Founding Member 2012-04-27