Legal Question in Technology Law in California
message boards
I've heard that forum owners who make no attempt to control posted content to bear no legal responsibility. This seems to be the course Yahoo has taken with their unmoderated boards, which are rife with spam, defamation, illegal pornography-but nothing ever happens to them!
Apparently, the reasoning is this: if I moderate content, I am the online equivalent of a magazine editor and therefore accountable for what appears. However, if I merely provide a forum, I'm like the phone company. I simply offer a means of communication.
Is this true? If I provide a non-profit, unmoderated political forum, I am unlikely to be held liable for users who post libel, copyrighted material, etc.? Should I not remove such posts, even when asked to, lest I be considered an ''editor'' and lose my ''open forum'' status? Should I eliminate my admin section altogether and never pull a post again, even spam?
In order to better avoid legal confrontation, which is the safer route: a heavily moderated forum or a completely open forum? It seems to me that an open forum would be more likely to attract unduly posts and thus actually garner more complaints and potential lawsuits.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: message boards
Congress decided in 1996 to provide immunity to Internet Service Providers as a means of providing them the freedom to eliminate offensive communications. The immunity applies whether the ISP actually edits communications or not.
The immunity does not cover intellectual property infringements, such as trademark and copyright violations.
The question of whether you should edit your forum (as well as means of protecting you from intellectual property problems) is a matter of legal advice, for which you should hire competent counsel.
Do not seek legal advice from an Internet message board...
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