Yeah, that may be great for Australia, but there's countries where law > disclaimer applies.

I'm curious, what does the law in your country require? Is a user able to demand that everything he posted be deleted at any time?

No, not necessarily. But he's entitled to have everything deleted that relates to his person, which is in any case his e-mail-address, and, as most courts argue, his IP address/history. And this deletion must be easily accessible. Whether it has to be automated is subject to discussion, but I would not wager on a lenient judge.

The US have a widely different approach to privacy and privacy protection from that in many European countries, especially Germany. Our constitutional court has derived a fundamental right to data self-determination from our constitution.

Hmm...then it sounds like what people need is a mod that allows a user to disable their account and delete all personal information without necessarily deleting the user from the database. I'm kind of surprised that it isn't built in if something like that would be required to conform with privacy laws in some countries.

I brought this up during vB4 alpha testing and was backed by Scott from vBGermany. I got a promise they'd look into it, same for a checkbox to concede copyrights for uploads (German/European courts like to see direct and active user involvement over some TOS hidden away somewhere). Never heard of it again.

In the US our institutions (financial, business, government) would be held to the decision of our federal courts on this matter, and our institutions are having too much fun collecting data on us.

I have the following in my terms of service and site rules:

A German Court might hold that as surprising (given the width of rights you reserve that are not limited to the immediate use) and thus forfeit.

A German court can jam it up its butt too.

Not if you're running a German site for the German public - just like I can ignore funny US laws, but you can't (you're US based, aren't you?).