I have once again opened a site I own; VerbalBattle.com to be a forum where people can debate and argue with 100% freedom of speech. No banning, no censorship, nothing. That being said... last time I had the site up one member was sending harassing PM's to another member... that member contacted me and said she was going to sue me and the site, and yadda, yadda, yadda, so I just shut the whole thing down... its now been about a year and a half and i never heard anything from her. Anyways, I am wondering if a situation like that happens to arise again am would I be in any legal situation where I could face any penalties? Be it someone sending "mean" PM's, or attacking someone on the boards. I mean that is kind of the point of the site... our motto is "It's better to fight with words than with guns"... which we fully believe.
ISPs and forums are generally protected as the site content are user-generated and they merely serve as conduits or facilitators.
Always. Still, there ought to be a standard of civility, and rules of the forum to "promote" those standards. An "ad hominem" attack is an attack against the person not the argument and as such is a fallacy (as I recall). It also (ultimately) defeats the purpose of a forum by promoting those most willing to and skilled in attacking character rather than reasoning and defeating, eventually silencing, those wanting to otherwise engage in a debate or discussion. And that's just off the top of my head. So, is there a reason not to provide rules (here at DP there are rules), and if so, well, chaos will rule your board. If there is need of rules, can you enforce them? Will you. That, is can you monitor/log personal messages (through your forum) and make the appropriate response to rules violations. I don't know that's even possible, but I do recall there being a rule here on DP that one can't send an affiliate link through PM, so I'm assuming that it is possible to monitor/log. By the way, I did visit your forum previously (from another thread here), and I bookmarked it as those are the sorts of boards I am interested in. At present I'm not terribly free to participate, but I certainly am looking forward to it. So, while I didn't directly deal with the question at hand (legalities), I certainly hope that I have given you something to think about. There's a bunch more I could say, and I've likely said too much already, but I hope it helps.
Thanks memyselfandI, I really appreciate it! And I do kind of agree with you, last time it did get chaotic and name calling ensued and the whole topics at hand were lost after the first few posts. This time around ti seems to be attracting a more intelligent crowd, and to be honest I do like it better. So, perhaps it will have rules, though liberal ones.
You could be sued, will it matter? More than likely nothing will happen. Just taking a quick look at your TOS of the forum, you should revamp it some. What country are you hosted in? You don't notify anyone, all you say the country where ... is posted. No one knows which county's laws they have to follow. Your opening yourself up with that. If you live in say georgia, US and are hosted in Texas, US, then you may want to cover yourself, say something along the lines of nothing against US Federal Law, Laws governing the States of Texas and Georgia, and International Law. Its always a good idea to add the state you actually live in as you are still liable for those laws. You may also want to add somewhere in there that registering is agreeing to the TOS and your site/staff/owners/operators etc. are held harmless of all content submitted (to protect yourself against a suit for harassment) and add in there something along the lines of not attacking the person, just attack the viewpoint. I like the theme of your site though, thats a great idea. Also, look into whoever you host with's TOS and make sure you cover all those bases so they don't terminate you. Even when your on a dedi server (don't know if you are) your still bound by that hosts TOS.