AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Talk Belize Chat Area pedros gone

What your saying is that Pedro was not banned because of his postings, but because of all the pm's and emails to Marty. Then Pedro shouldn't be banned but the ones bothering Marty should be banned.

No, i'm just guessing! It's time to move own!

If I choose to "ignore" someone, it does not stop their comments becoming part of a public forum

At what point does a business venture (yes folks, remember what this is ) with an attached message board that many of us are able to freely enjoy have to decide if the potential liability of allowing one person to "say anything" jeopardizes the venture itself?

The fact that one may successfully defend against litigation does not address the cost of defending against the litigation, does it?

I'm sure there are a few folks who have me set to "ignore", because primarily of the subjects discussed on US Chat, but no one who can say I have defamed a business rival or someone I personally dislike.

Some of us have thicker skins than others, and relish a good rumble: we exchange barbs and still communicate frequently via PMs, but there are others who are more fragile, and should not be subject to "bullying", especially in a public forum.

It is up to each of us to decide where the line is drawn, and for those who make wrong decisions, in the eyes of those ultimately running the board, a temporary or permanent ban is the remedy

I personally like Peter, and will miss a lot of his comments, but that's not really what the discussion is about, is it?

Oh brother... P1, you are a total mess.

Actually, message boards are legally viewed as hosting companies where the users posts are content that is hosted by the message board. Therefore, a hosting company, (aka marty in this circumstance) cannot be held liable for their user's posts so long as they respond to any DMCA takedown requests.

However, when a host starts to edit their content, such as in banning users and removing posts, then they start to open themselves up to liability as they are no longer considered hosts of content but editorialized publications.

If anything, Marty has exposed himself to litigation by banning users and removing posts if something manages to somehow get past his editing efforts.

Really? Litigation over a cyber board? OH MY! What is this world coming to? That's good info to know - I will never be a moderator of a board, that's for sure! Nobody would have any friends if anybody was mean.

The precedence was established by the DMCA with the DMCA Safe Harbor clause. Specifically the law applies to copyright violations on the web, but courts are also applying the definition to other liability cases (such as defamation) as well.

Interesting! I just would never have thought - but then again I can sometimes just be naive when it comes to things like that!

In order to qualify for safe harbor protection, a service provider who hosts content must:

* have no knowledge of, or financial benefit from, infringing activity on its network
* have a copyright policy and provide proper notification of that policy to its subscribers
* list an agent to deal with copyright complaints

Do we really want to get to a situation where we have to agree to terms and sign a waiver before logging on?

You were the one that brought up liability. I was just pointing out that liability has nothing to do with it. If it did, he would approach it differently.