Liability issues with postings to Forums

We are developing a Consumer portal site and have question.

Does anyone know of how a website can avoid liability for the potential liable remarks posted against individuals or companies to a Forum on a site.

dragoncom@aol.com

Originally posted by dragoncom:
We are developing a Consumer portal site and have question. Does anyone know of how a website can avoid liability for the potential liable remarks posted against individuals or companies to a Forum on a site.

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From what I understand quickly, the more the portal assumes editorial control over the posts, the more chance it may have in being liable for the postings. The more it is a "common carrier" or a conduit, like a telephone company which just provides a stream but does not edit the content, the less chance of liability.

Famous cases include Cubby v. Compuserve, Stratton Oakmont v. Compuserver (Prodigy held potentially liable for defamatory statements made in financial discussion area as a "publisher," due to Prodigy's efforts to provide a family-friendly service and monitoring of the content of on-line discussions.)

However, the 1996 Communications Decency Act contains a defense for on-line service providers from civil liability for content they do not create. This provides a "good samaritan" type defense where cleaning up language should not be construed as control that might create liability such as the Prodigy case.

Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 958 F. Supp. 1124 (E.D. Va.), aff'd, 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997). This was a defamation case which AOL wherein AOL was granted summary judgment dismissing the case. A cite from that case I was sent once was "section 230 creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service. Specifically, Section 230 precludes courts from entertaining claims that would place a computer service provider in a publisher's role. Thus, lawsuits seeking to hold a service providers liable for its exercise of a publisher's traditional editorial functions -- such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content -- are barred."

Laurence Godfrey v. Demon Internet Limited is a recent case (1999) that occurred in the UK and the provider was found potentially liable for continuing to store and have available (after the warning by plaintiff) defamatory posts in a newsgroup. The judge specifically stated that the US approach is different than the UK so you need to be aware of your local rules.

This is a long topic, lots of variables. This may be a good start. I'll leave you with a few more.

John Doe a/k/a Aquacool_2000 v. Yahoo!, No. 2:00cv04993 (C.D. Cal., filed May 11, 2000).

About.com v. Doe (S.D. N.Y., filed April 11, 2000).

Wade Cook Financial Corp. v. John Doe, (W.D.Wash. filed 3/8/99)

Phillip Services Corp. v. Weslink, Ontario Court (General Division) (6/24/98)

Originally posted by dragoncom:
We are developing a Consumer portal site and have question.
Does anyone know of how a website can avoid liability for the potential liable remarks posted against individuals or companies to a Forum on a site.

Click to expand...

We handle it the same way michael said he does. We don't moderate our boards and provide open membership to anyone that wants to participate. Nothing prevents anyone from suing us though! Nobody can prevent that.