Customizing SMF > Building Your Community and other Forum Advice

Do Forum Owners Need a Lawyer?

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JohnS:
Most of these people who threaten are just spouting off and usually do not have a legal leg to stand on. What the legal situation is will depend on where you are and for example it could be very different in the USA to Europe. Personally I do not believe it necessary to retain a lawyer just in case and the time for a lawyer would be when presented with a court summons, though this is just my personal opinion and not a recommendation. I realise the US is a bit more litigious than  Europe and you should at least read and be aware of the laws that apply to you, I am thinking of copyright, data protection, privacy, trading standards, consumer rights and advertising laws in particular, every country has them.

I am not a lawyer but I believe having the necessary clauses in your sign up agreement will get rid of most liability. in my non legal opinion the standard SMF sign up agreement is quite goodfor most purposes but does need a couple of things added:

1. Membership of the forum conveys no rights to the subscriber and it may be withdrawn at any time without notice.
2. The decision to edit or delete any posting, or ban or remove any subscriber, is at the sole discretion of the adminstrator or the moderator, this may be done without notice to the poster/subscriber and no discussion on this decision will be entered into.
3. Any attempt by a banned subscriber to rejoin the forum by using different credentials and/or the use of proxy servers will be treated as malicious activity and appropriate action will be taken.

If you take subscriptions you may wish to add something about refunds, for example either no refunds or refunds and liability limited to the unexpired value of any subscription paid.

Good luck.

Kindred:
thing is... it might be nice to spell those things out, but they are not needed...

forums are privately owned... which means that the owner can limit, restrict or otherwise run things in any manner that he or she sees fit. "freedom of speech" and other laws which affect public organizations have no binding effect on privately owned forums.

JohnS:
Laws differ in different countries though the overriding principle appears to be that that provider of a Forum is not the publisher of any post but a facilitator so has no liability for any post up to the point someone complains. After that complaint is received the Forum owner becomes the publisher and therefore liable unless they remove the article. Seems to me the safest thing to do is to remove anything you consider unsuitable and definitely anything where a complaint is received, though I appreciate monitoring large forums can be very time consuming.
It gets much more complex if you are charging for a Forum rather than providing it free of charge, if you are charging you are best to consider yourself as a company with all the liabilities and responsibilities that incurs.Certainly in UK as soon as you charge you become a sole trader and subject to trading laws that you would not be subject to as a private individual.
I know some people will disagree with this and I can only repeat what I have read from various sources. In general the courts in UK so far have sided with the Forum/Site owner and disallowed any claims, but have not always allowed them to reclaim thier costs. If someone does sue, you have to find the funds to defend the case, even if you are sure you are in the right you still have to fund the defence until a decision is made and that decision may not award you costs even where you are found blameless.
It is all still a bit of a minefield and in general the laws on this are still emerging and are untested.
It would not put me off running a free forum, but I am not sure I would want to run a forum that charges without having a watertight registration and use agreement.

ApplianceJunk:
Can't we all just get along. ;)

MovedGoalPosts:
The internet is unfortunately full of people who wish to make trouble and believe it is their absolute right to say and do what they wish, often in the name of free speech.  After all that is what a forum is there to facilitate?

In the UK, our environment for litigation is not dissimilar to the USA.  Incessant TV ads for injury compensation solicitors only promote this culture. At the first sign of being wronged, for even the most trivial of matters, many will wheel out the threat of litigation.  In most cases that will be hot air once the "victim", looks again at things in the cold light of day.

One thing that will often cause conflict is not that content is removed, but often that content will not be removed even if a person is removed from a site.  I've had one door slammer, who I had thought I could treat as a friend (he'd even been to my house as part of a gaming community weekend, so he knew where I lived), threatening all sorts of Data Protection Act and related stuff, as well as inevitable litigation.  He was banned after making personal threats to others, which then became threats against me too.  What really irked is that I wouldn't delete his postings, over 1000 of them, as well as the account information.  Deleting the posts would have made nonsense of much of the forum.  Deleting the account information, which I believe I can retain under the UK's DPA, would prevent me seeing if he was trying to return under a new identity.  So many door slammers seem to want a way back in.  The email and even SMS correspondence, or threats against me, went on for a few weeks before it finally went quiet.

I've dealt with the post removal scenario by adding an extra clause in the registration agreement to confirm that the poster is the author and responsible for the accuracy of their content, but that they grant a perpetual right to the site to publish their content, which will not be removed even if they cease site membership, but only if it breaches site rules.  Perhaps though from one of the posts above, I shouldn't be using the word "publish"?

The internet is full of armchair lawyers.  As an admin sooner or later you'll come across one.  You need to be ready for them with strong site policies.  Hiring your own lawyer just in case seems a bit over the top.

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