>> We hope that the offensive marks will decrease work for the mods and help them
>> to make better decisions. Although at the moment hardly any of the posts are in
>> need of any moderation both markings (helpful and offensive) are designed with new members and
>> more posts in mind.
>>
High Court ruling serves as a warning against any moderation of user comments
OUT-LAW News, 08/04/2010
www.out-law.com/page-10902
Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer with Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said that the ruling serves as a reminder of the risks in moderating user-generated content.
"Many sites apply some form of moderation to all user contributions for reasons of quality control, whether that's before or after publication. This ruling just shows how dangerous that is and how narrow the safe harbour may be," he said.
"Even an attempt to filter for profanities or comment spam, if done manually, involves a risk for the publisher. If you want to be sure that you're not liable for what your users say, the judge is basically saying you need to ignore user contributions completely until you get a complaint."
"That's not a new principle," said Robertson, "but it's a warning to site owners about how to interpret it. Some owners may think they have less responsibility for user comments than they really do, and they may wrongly assume that a post-moderation policy is completely safe."
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Positivity, Negativity - now Helpful or O.. new
Positivity, Negativity - now Helpful or .. new