legal issues

It depends whet country the server is in with the forum on. Each country has it's own laws.

But  in most countries if someone posts something that is slanderous to an individual, group, company, orgnisation, etc. you and the server the site is hosted on could be liable. Even if you have disclaimers.

The only way to avoid this is to moderate your forum and remove any posts that could be dodgy.

A number of sites and the web hosts of the server where the site is hosted have been sued sucessfuly in the UK for containing slandourious posts and I believe the same is true in the US.

The UK site friendsreunited.co.uk was in the news earlier this year, being sued over slanderous posts in it's forum. The site tries to bring back togather old school firends, however some people posted nasty things about old school teachers on the site and so the site was taken to court.

Even disclaimers won't prevent this, you must try and moderate any forums you have and remove dodgy content as soon as you become awere of it.

Well, in the U.S., you, as the forum operator, are protected from liability for what your users post.  You are not liable if someone slanders someone else on your forum.  You aren't liable if someone posts material that infringes on copyright either.

But (and a big but), if you are notified that something is slander, infringes a copyright, etc., or if you knew it was there and a "reasonable person" would know that something posted was slander or infringes a copyright, etc. and you don't take it down, then you could become liable.

Also, it is possible that you get sued even if legally you are not liable under the law.

Also some countries, like the U.K., do not have the same protections.  Which really sucks considering that you could get fined for what someone else did.  I don't think that is fair and just, but that is the law in a lot of countries.

And disclaimers always help.  They are better than nothing, and do give your lawyer something to talk about.  You might even be able to sue them back for violating your terms and conditions!

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