Lawyers?
Be interested to hear the legal theory here. What's _running a forum_ if not an invitation to comment?
Media sites which ask readers to comment on news stories are at greater risk of bearing responsibility for those comments than for comments in online forums or discussion groups, leading web moderators have warned. Though there are few verdicts to help lawyers and site moderators come up with hard and fast rules, it is …
May I check if I have this correct?
A web site publisher who exercises no editorial control over the content of the site not written by him is likely to be less burdened by litigation than a (I posit) more responsible publisher who employs people to moderate contributions such as this one.
So Vulture Central will now be in a more sound position by not moderating this comment?
Bonkers
"[Bulletin board posts] are rather like contributions to a casual conversation (the analogy sometimes being drawn with people chatting in a bar) which people simply note before moving on; they are often uninhibited, casual and ill thought out."
Would this change if the comment gets massively linked to or slashdotted?
It doesn't help that comments can be viewed from around the world and that each country has it's own ideas of what's OK and what's not. Even worse with the US which thinks it's laws are pre-eminent.
On a practical point of view surly comments fall into the same category as the traditional newspaper letters section.
This post has been deleted by its author
Yes, it does actually make some sense. If you don't moderate, you have no control over what's said (and may not be able to for something like LiveJournal where there are far too many comments to screen them). It's an analogy with the phone system, where the phone company is not responsible for things said on the phone even though they transmit them.
But if you exercise *any* editorial control at all, you are deemed to have taken an active part in publishing the comments and are therefore held responsible for them. You have actively decided that that specific comment is to be published.
It seems to me that to invite reader comments on certain news stories is to risk breaching the strict court reporting rules about what can be said when. For example, when reporting a crime, you can pretty much speculate at will until somebody is charged, then you must be very careful until they have been tried. To allow readers to post "Glad they've got that toerag locked up, he's obviously guilty, I know him and he's been in trouble for the same thing before" at the bottom of your article would not be clever and could possibly get the case thrown out on the basis that it is no longer possible for the suspect to get a fair trial.
Fact 1) The CTO at Phorm is a nice bloke called Stratis Scleparis
http://www.phorm.com/about/exec_scleparis.php
Fact 2) Before he was at Phorm, Stratis was CTO at BT Retail, where his responsibilities must surely have included authorising (and then authorising denial of) the secret and quite possibly illegal BT/Phorm internet interception trials
Fact 3) BT have an ethics policy which covers employees going to work for suppliers etc. A prize to anyone who can find evidence it's ever been used.
I've certainly noticed that even people like the Daily Mail make damn sure that comments are turned off if the case is sub judice, as Judge hauls editor into the dock for contempt does not make the best of stories for the editor concerned, even if the rest of the papers enjoy reporting that.
.... you make me realise that everyone in existence, past, present and future, is an arsehole.
I would LOVE to not have had to anonymous coward this, but unfortunately I found out that if you google my name my register comments appear pretty early on and I don't really want someone randomly googling me, reading that comment, and thinking I'm serious because they haven't bothered clicking through to the link.
That the Moderatrix has not only the responsibility of ensuring only the cream of the comment crop get published (which has to make you wonder what the quality of the ones that don't get passed her are like)
But she also has the responsibilty of ensuring El Reg doesn't get sued back into the stone ages? Now that's quite some whip she's wielding over her employers!
Huh!? Now I can say I've seen it all... Moderation firm. I wonder how long it will take for them to start outsourcing this too. Or have they already? Are they gonna kill my comment!?
@Sarah Bee
Don't worry, I believe you will still look cute in white hair. Not so sure about the teeth though...
how many comments have been blocked as people decide to see how far they can push el-reg.
Dead vulture - because I know phorm are in the process of generating some sick comments and getting ready calling their solicitors! One less annoying group of semi-intelligent people to ask inconvenient questions on tha interweb!
Get those teeth sharpened to points instead of grinding them.
BTW, I know a rogue dentist who can install hollow canines with poison sacs so you can bite people and poison them. A variety of venoms are available including one which causes the bones and cartilage to dissolve, but the one I like is the one that makes the bitee turn purple and swell up like a balloon.
As I recall, both defamation and slander require that you (the person being defamed or slandered) go down in the estimation of more than one person as a result of what somebody else wrote/said. If you can find two ppl that believe what they read on an internet forum about someone then you should probably ask to move to another asylum.
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