So who's liable?

piersk

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/21/moderator_liable_for_comments/

Rediculous if you ask me. Fair enough the owners of the board, but I don't reckon the moderators should be help liable.

dalecosp

IANAL, so I can't say ;-)

However, this:

Universal Boards was also accused of buying up domain names that expired, and then using those domains for advertising porn, including a site that was previously owned by a German Volunteer Firemen's Association.

has happened to one of my clients as well, though I don't think that "Universal Boards" was behind the stinking idgit that pulled that one off. BION, IIRC, he was a countryman of yours....

Now, I've nothing against the Brits, but he did a bad job. If you meet him, LART him, eh?

hard :mad:

dalecosp

Well, on 2nd thought, I will go a tad farther: if the mods are responsible, it should be told to them up front by the board's owner(s), and if this happens, you'll see a lot less mods on the 'Net's forums.

Maybe they'll go the way of the dodo ... and, whassup next? IRC?

bpat1434

Ach du meine gute!!! Ich glaube kein Wort devon.
(Oh my gosh!! I don't believe a word of it.)

All I can say is this: won't happen in the United States. Well, I shouldn't say won't, but most likely wouldn't. That whole freedom of speech thing, but the stupid Patriot Act f*cked us over.... but how can a moderator be held responsible for what someone posts? If it's illegal, and they don't know about it, how are you responsible?

It's like identity theft: how are you responsible for the kiddie porn someone purchases with your CC if you don't know they have it yet (i.e. you haven't reported it stolen / deactivated it)? You can't be. That's why most companies will give you your money back, or at least try to.

Honestly, if that's what it's coming to: people who don't run stuff being held responsible, I want all the purchasers for Microsoft held responsible for the rising gas prices in the US since they have NOTHING to do with eachother 😉 🙂

wow... I don't see this standing for long.... a moderator (or team) can't be expected to browse every single topic on every forum and check for "illegal" activity. It's just not gonna happen.... oh well... sucks for Deutschland....

Megahertza

Forums without moderates invites illegal material to be posted. Soon forum ownser will be held liable and hence there will a lot less forums. Free speech will be the victim soon.

laserlight

A Hamburg court has ruled that moderators of internet forums are liable for content posted on their sites.
...
Legal experts now fear that because of the ruling, lawyers will be seeking damages from moderators who they believe are breaking the law.

Reading the article that that article linked to gives me the impression that 'moderators' here means 'operators'. We automatically assume that 'moderators' are not necessarily on the staff of the operator, but in my opinion that court has assumed a model where the moderation team is part of the operator's staff.

Under such a model, that court then effectively requires that proactive moderation be done by the operator ("staff or technical means to review comments before they are published"). On the other hand, we are used to a system of reactive moderation done by parties who may not be on the staff of the operator, so obviously we see injustice in placing liability on the moderators. From what I see, that court is not aware that this situation of third party moderation exists. If not, the judges would not so clearly state that they may "have to expand their in-house resources" (emphasis mine).

EDIT:
That said, I find it unreasonable to require proactive moderation and to place liability on the operators (assuming that they are unaware of the offending content), but I think that it is important to address the misconception that the concept of 'moderators' used in the article is identical our concept of moderators.

vaaaska

Well, you know what all of this implies whether it's moderators or operators. They will pass this on to users - and I don't see why this is wrong. TOS will change and we'll all be more careful to not be so rambunctious. I guess we'll all return to BBS'ing it again.

maddog720

The users should be held responsible.