Slashdot Mirror
When Should a Website Edit Its Users?
rw2 asks: "Can a weblog edit users comments without opening itself up to liability in case of a slander suit? I run a political weblog and have a policy similar to slashdots in terms of the comments posted belonging to their owners. I'm worried about instituting something like lameness filters as it seems like as soon as you start regulating what your users post you have agreed to edit them for other reasons as well. Can someone point me to a good resource on issues like this. Those of us who aren't owned by publically traded companies are better off avoiding potential problems rather than hire lawyers to help us wiggle out later." Honestly, this greatly depends on the type of weblog you run and the community behind it. I don't think a one-answer-suits-all-sites solution exists, particularly for the reason that what may be inappropriate for one site may be more than appropriate for others. What say you?
You should, they have a pretty good template to start from here
To Quote:
"Messages that are unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable may be removed and may result in the loss of your Yahoo! ID (including e-mail). Please do not post any private information unless you want it to be available publicly."
I really hate Dan Patrick.
There's nothing long with Editing something as long as your approve of the rest of it. As soon as you edit something, you've "agreed" that you're taking out material that you, the editor, finds unworthy of your publication - be it a weblog, a book, a magazine, or a television show.
Because of this, the remaining portion is now just as much your work as it is theirs. It's like touching just a single paintbrush to the Mona Lisa: while you can't claim you've painted the Mona Lisa, you could claim that you've done "art". In essense, by altering it, you've created something else, and that represents you and your views.
Now then, back to your blog. I say that no one could hold you libel for posts you didn't edit, but then, there's a problem - namely - that people against the material on your site can ask why you didn't exercise the right to edit the material, and claim that everything represents your opinion if you have the ability to edit and aren't exercising that ability.
Oh well, it's a tough call. Just some feedback.
When I'm doing legal research, my first stop is Perkins Coie LLP's Internet Case Law digest. In this case, you should probably look under defamation.
If you're allergic to Katz, you can avoid him by clicking on preferences and checking him off in "Excluding Stories from the Homepage."
The DMCA section 512 guarantees protection if you do NOT alter the contents of the users posts. See
The DMCA section 512
I belong to a website where there's tons of political talk, personal sharing, advice etc. being posted all the time. The basic rules are:
(a) You cannot out anybody. If you give out a name or location, that post gets edited or deleted. People who post that sort of thing are often warned about it, and have the option to fix it themselves within the 30-minute "edit window" for a post.
(b) Hate speech is usually deleted. This is a sticky situation, and usually it requires a ton of people complaining to the site administrator that such and such a post is offensive. We don't automatically filter out any words, and each post is often treated separately.
(c) Spam. Nobody wants it there, so it's toast the moment it goes up.
(d) Copyright violations. This is one of the regulations for the hosting corporation, and so we usually have to replace text with a link to it. Sometimes we get away with it if we're siting a literary passage for a debate or something.
(e) Every now and then, if something is truly indecent, it'll get cut. That's too bad, because I had this really great run of posts that said "Don't click this!" and pointed to our goatsex friend. It was quite funny, but one silly twit who couldn't take a joke complained and it got taken down. Fortunately, that was almost two months after the fact so nobody there was liable to read that post again anytime soon anyway.
(f) Every now and then we self-police, and gang up on somebody if they're being really cruel. Many people enjoy their anonymity there, and use the opportunity to talk about a lot of personal stuff, so if a particularly mean poster uses that stuff against them, they'll usually face criticism and pressure to be a little nicer.
(g) We also have a board dedicated to flaming. This is great because once discussion gets heated, every poster on that particular board who isn't interested in hearing it can redirect the posters in question to the flame board to air out grievances. Needless to say, our flame board is pretty popular.
I think the important thing isn't so much what gets a user edited, but whether or not that user knows about it beforehand and is given fair warning. Yeah, it ends up being subjective, but one of the reasons people like to go to this place is because they can safely discuss things. Our administrator is great about leaving political talk alone -- I've been ranting and raving about how stupid this whole Afghanistan war is, for instance, and there's been no deleting of any of my posts. That said, I've had to stand up to some pretty harsh criticism, but that's okay -- as far as political speech goes, it's really free. Even though we do self-police, we never ask someone to change their opinions on issues in debate.
On other method that gets used, new users go through a trial period where they can't post on every board, even though they can read them all. This gets them a chance to see how our particular dynamic goes before they are allowed to post. It's arbitrary (two weeks), but it does filter out many people who aren't genuinely interested in the site themselves (spammers, trolls, etc.). This is a new measure we've taken up, and it's pretty controversial right now, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone unless they KNOW something like this could fix some problems they're having.
As a website administrator, you've got to dedicate yourself to figuring out your own sites needs and getting everyone to stick to them. Oh yeah, and be prepared to be underappreciated and called a fascist pig if you ever do edit, even if it is the right thing for your site.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Simply: Speech on a message board is worthless and not legally binding. If you want freedom of speech, yell out your window - and you're more likely to get in trouble for that.
This was on Tomalak's Realm a few days ago.
Newsbytes: California Appeals Court Upholds Message Board Speech.
Also another link: SJ Mercury: From November 28, 1999; `Cybersmear' lawsuits raise privacy concern.
PS, please read the articles and understand them. I know it is a very hard thing to do, but I've even made them hyperlinks.