Forum Moderators Liable for Posts!

[3z3k3l]

Just read this:

German court rules moderators liable for forum comments

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http://www.theregister.com/2006/04/2..._for_comments/

By Jan Libbenga
Published Friday 21st April 2006 12:05 GMT
A Hamburg court has ruled (http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/72085) that moderators of internet forums are liable for content posted on their sites.
The previous interpretation held that they were only accountable for illegal content they had been made aware of. The new ruling means if operators do not have enough in-house resources to monitor forums, they should "reduce the scope of their business operations".

The case started with a forum member of German news site Heise Online, who posted a script in order to disrupt the business practices of Universal Boards. This Munich company has been widely criticised for allegedly distributing premium rate internet dialers. Universal Boards was also accused of buying up domain names that expired, and then using those domains for advertising porn, including a site that was previously owned by a German Volunteer Firemen's Association.
Last year Universal Boards demanded that Heise removed the script, which it did, but the publisher refused to sign a formal obligation. Universal Boards then asked the district court to issue a temporary restraining order. The legal fight continued until last week, when the judge handed down his final ruling.
Legal experts now fear that because of the ruling, lawyers will be seeking damages from moderators who they believe are breaking the law. Heise says it will appeal the ruling.?

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Hope this doesn't catch on.

[TruthElixirX]

I'm not to worried as

A)I'm not german.
B)I don't have any German users.

But yeah, I hope this is not something that becomes popular.

[peterska2]

Someone remind me to never move or host in Germany then.

But seriously, if this catches on then it could be bad news for a lot of people.

[Rich]

I highly doubt we will ever see anything like that in the U.S. That would mean that moderators are also responsible for spammers, bots, etc. We have no control over WHAT is posted until it has come to our attention. There would need to be some very strict guidlines with a ruling like that. Someone could have a friend write up some stuff that is inappropriate and the other friend could sue the mods for not removing it....and it caused them emotional anguish.

That ruling is a joke. It should be revised during the appeal process.

[Xenon]

yeah, that's so sad but true...

hence why i don't have my own board these days, just vb.org which doesn't fall under german ridicular laws...

[Erwin]

Interesting...

[Tony G]

Good example of when the law becomes stupid and unreasonable.

[Brad]

I wonder if this will apply to moderators living outside of the country. I know of a few German forums run by an entire staff living abroad...

[Tony G]

If the server is located in Germany, I'm pretty sure it will fall under German jurisdiction as well as all the material contained on the server.

[theArchitect]

Originally Posted by Tony G

If the server is located in Germany, I'm pretty sure it will fall under German jurisdiction as well as all the material contained on the server.

Probable.

It will just mean that more and more people will move their servers "offshore".