[OT] Liability of Moderator

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 08/10/13 13:38, Chris wrote:
> Yep, I thought so too. However, I wonder if there is something that saves the
> moderator's a**e, else we wouldn't have so many forums all over the world. There
> are countries (like GB and the Republic of Ireland) that have very strict libel
> laws. Imagine the comments under newspaper articles, if you could take the
> newspaper to court for the bullsh*t some people write (libelous, racist,
> insulting), there would be an avalanche of lawsuits (if it's just to get some
> money).

Which is why British newspapers at least are quite strict about moderating 
comment threads on their websites.  You also have contempt-of-court law to 
contend with -- if an article is about an ongoing legal case, for example, it is 
typical for comment threads to be turned off or at least pre-moderated.

British libel law would be hard pressed to pursue somebody with no UK presence 
who published a website hosted outside of the UK, although there have been cases 
where the UK arm of a publisher was targeted with a libel lawsuit for a book 
published and theoretically only distributed abroad.  It's sufficient for even 
one copy of the book to be sold to a UK buyer by a company like Amazon.