Via Slashdot, an important one to watch for some bloggers: Aaron Wall, who runs a SEO blog, is being sued by Traffic-Power.com for statements posted in the comments section of his blog. Under US federal law he may normally be safe enough as blogs should fall under the same laws which protect discussion board & mailing list owners, however in this case Traffic-Power.com could be seen as a competitor to his own site. One to watch.
Blogger being sued for visitor comments
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Definitely one to keep an eye on. Hopefully he’ll get away with it.
there’s already pretty solid case law on boards. the general rule if, you’re safe, until someone points out a problem to you, and then it’s down to how you react to that problem.
bloggers *are* legally responsible for comments on their blogs. you have the ability to delete comments. that’s one of the main reasons it’s there. some hosts will constantly remind you that *you* are legally responsible for comments on your blog.
as a for instance for you. if i was to say that such and such a politican was a known paedophile, even though there’s no evidence of that, would you allow that comment to stand? or wouldn’t you do the wise thing and delete it?
interestingly, you have moderation enabled. which suggests that, should my comment get moderated, that you approve of it. that surely acknowledges your own responsibility for comments on your own blog? moderation is not just about spam filtering.
fmk
Intertesting point about moderation, certainly makes sense, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is law. After all, what if I had 100,000 posters per day, would I be expected by law to moderate them all? What web forum does that? None that I know of, it’s an unrealistic task IMHO.
A blog is just another form of discussion board, under US law the owner of a forum can’t be held liable for their visitor comments. [according to linked article] Blogs should be the very same.
However I don’t know what the law is in Ireland or the UK.
FMK, welcome to the site btw
no, you’re not required to moderate every single post on a board. but the main case law in this part of the world centers of a few instances where a board was advised that there was a problem with a partic post, and either removed it (and so won the case) or did nothing (and so were held responsible). it’s the sort of behaviour patterns that influences isp’s to pull sites as soon as they receive a letter from a solictor (see the study one european organisation did, setting up a dozen sites with some out-of-copyright text on them, then sending solictors letters to the isps claiming breach of copyright).
but even without looking at the law, what’s fair and reasonable? i think it *is* fair and reasonable that a blogger has some responsibility for the comments on their blog.
oh and i like that blogs are considered boards – i did try some bullshit theory earlier this year the blogs are just distributed bulletin boards
So what can we put here to get U into trouble?
I’ll be keeping an eye on you in future so
Maybe we can slander Twenty Major and see if he sue’s ye?
I called him a cunt a few times, got no response
Only a few?
lol