Some forums offer a blacklist advising customers on scam companies etc. Can webmasters or owners that have this info on their site get into any legal troubles? Thank you.
I don't believe you could get in trouble. It would be no different than www.ripoffreport.com and the kinds of things they put on that site.
Well I can only hope so. We have quite a big forum and one of the forums is a Blacklist. A company listed in this blacklist now wants us to remove his thread. If I remove his thread, then we lose quite a bit of traffic, and community members will get angry that we are removing posts that belong to that community. Ok, take your word for it. Thanks.
You might want to discuss the issue with the company that hosts your web site. I know of a case where a forum was taken down simply because of legal threats by someone on a blacklist. Even though that person wouldn't have had a case, the hosting company simply didn't want or know how to deal with it. If you are upfront and give your host some warning, it's less likely you'll run into problems. Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/) probably has more information about your legal rights and responsibilities as a forum owner.