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Liability regarding negative info about a company posted on a forum

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  • 03-27-2007, 01:18 PM
    rickj
    Liability regarding negative info about a company posted on a forum
    The forum owner is in CA. In this case, the company who is threatening lawsuits is in FL.

    I run a Q&A forum where there is a very long thread of people complaining about a particular company:
    http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/study-a...ted-36786.html

    The company has got attorneys threatening many of the posters with lawsuits if they do not remove their posts.

    1. Do they have a leg to stand on? From the research we've done, it seems not but we'd like other opinions.
    2. Can anyone point me to some good legal info on this issue?

    It seems clear too that the site cannot be held liable, but if anyone can add info about site liability too, that would be appreciated.

    Thank you.

    Rick.
  • 03-27-2007, 01:23 PM
    aaron
    Re: Liability regarding negative info about a company posted on a forum
    Did you take down the thread, or is that just a bad link?
  • 03-27-2007, 01:26 PM
    rickj
    Re: Liability regarding negative info about a company posted on a forum
    I'm sorry. Not sure what went wrong. Here's the link:
    http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/study-a...ted-36786.html

    PS/Edit. strange. the link looks the same but this one works :)
  • 03-27-2007, 06:48 PM
    aaron
    Re: Liability regarding negative info about a company posted on a forum
    I suspect you've posted your query elsewhere, and cut and pasted the posted query as it appeared on the other site, thus capturing the vBulletin-style abbreviated URL isntead of the real URL. (You have an interesting presentation of vBulletin on your site, by the way.)

    I'm not going to give you a direct opinion on your situation, although others are free to do so, as to have a specific case analyzed you really should consult a lawyer. But in general terms, the owner of a public online bulletin board enjoys significant protection under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Communications Decency Act. That Act, passed in 1996, states "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This has been applied by the courts to provide broad protection to website owners for defamatory postings made by users. (Here's a Google search which brings up a bunch of related information.)

    The users who post such information have no such protection.
  • 03-28-2007, 04:54 AM
    rickj
    Re: Liability regarding negative info about a company posted on a forum
    Thank you aaron. That is helpful. You've helped me discover a strange link issue too. :)

    For those of you who might want to check out the thread, it's the 5th one on the list here.
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