Topic: Moderating Posts
Letting your members talk freely...or not
A cautionary tale about bad things that happened to a good mailing list:
A list member talked about bad service from a company (relevant to the list's topic), when word got back to the company in question, rather than trying to correct the bad service, they sued the list member, the listowner and anyone who tried to help them pay their legal fees. In the end, the people who got sued had to settle simply because they couldn't afford the legal fees to continue to fight the suit. So the company won because they had deeper pockets, not because they were right.
In the USA, the First Amendment right to free speech only protects US citizens from the US Government trying to squelch our speech, it has no jurisidiction over businesses or other private individuals. Other countries have differing laws and protection (or lack of) for free speech. As listowners, we should try to be aware of our responsibilities and liabilities.
Last updated on January 3, 2004 04:00 PMIn the example given here why was the list owner sued? I understand from reading Yahoogroups TOS that the person who posts the offending comment is liable and not the listowner?
Am I mistaken?
How does a listowner stop this happening. Moderated lists can be very difficult to deal with.
Thanks,Pip
Posted by: Pip at March 7, 2004 01:37 AMThe list discussed in the Salon.com article wasn't hosted at Yahoogroups.
The Yahoogroups TOS won't protect listowners from suits by other people or companies. The Yahoogroups TOS is the contact between Yahoogroups and the group owners. If a company or individual wanted to sue the listowner, the Yahoogroups TOS wouldn't necessarily have any effect.
IANAL, of course and not a judge either. :)
As far as moderating a list, the list in the Salon.com article was moderated and that was part of the problem, the listowner had approved the messages so that made the listowner liable. Another suit, in California iirc, was over an UNmoderated list and the court found in favor of the listowner because it was unmoderated, the listowner therefore didn't approve or disapprove posts and wasn't liable for the individual members' posts.
So perhaps it's better to have an UNmoderated list...
Posted by: texas critter at March 7, 2004 02:06 AM