hi i am gonna start a user review based site like yelp.com is there any legal binding for such site. i mean would i be liable if users post negative reviews about any business/entity? wikivisas.com
You definitely do open yourself up to a whole new realm of liability issues. If you can afford it I recommend getting in touch with a lawyer about this and seeing if they can help you draft up a terms of service that would protect you from this. The biggest things (to me) would be: - creating a way for user reviews to get flagged for review if they have questionable content. - protecting the users from vengeful shop owners. I heard a story about a business owner hunting down and harassing someone for posting negative reviews about their business on yelp. Yelp definitely got sued for this as well - you do want to state that any reviews on the site are not endorsed by you or your company or by the companies website. - maybe even put in there that if any content possibly violates any law that it will be reported to law officials. Not sure if you really need this though, but it provides extra protection I am starting a review site as well so I have been looking into possible complications. Definitely talk to a lawyer if you can afford it though.
You would certainly be sensible to speak to a solicitor before setting it up. You not only need a set of terms and conditions but also need a process devised to deal with complaints about negative feedback. The simpliest option of cause is to simply remove any posting that receives a complaint but then your credibility as a site would be heavily damaged by that. The other extreme of simply saying all comments stand is equally dangerous as it would certainly make you liable if the offended party provided proof that the comments were liablous and you did nothing about it.