[FASherman]

Originally Posted by dwkerr

The administrators of a forum have responsibility over how the forum operates. I feel have the ability to see everything that is ahppening with the board, including the ability to see private messages, go along with that, it will allow administrators to confirm that their forums is not being used as a message base for persons carrying on illegal / criminal activity. Having said that , administrators should never give out (except by court order) any info read in the private message area, and should include in the registration rules and faq the fact that the owners / administrators do have the ability to monitor / read private message sent on the forum, and the reasons for this as well as a privacy statement.

You have no responsibility; responsibility is mandated by law. Your users have do have rights upheld in law. Unless you take the actions suggested above, you open yourself up to a lawsuit that can result in loosing everything you own, not to mention the posibility of criminal prosecution.

Here's the bottom line. Regardless of what you think, your forum is not your own. You are entitled to the software, but not the contents of the database. Those belong to the individual users. Believe it or not, even their own paswords are considered intellectual property. You should read about how one of the pioneers of Perl, Tom Christiansen, nearly went to jail.