Be interested to hear the legal theory here. What's _running a forum_ if not an invitation to comment?

But, I, they... bheheheh.... That's unpossible! The interrnet's very raison d'etre is the posting of rambling, ill thought-out screeds by retards. What will we all *do*?

"[Bulletin board posts] are rather like contributions to a casual conversation (the analogy sometimes being drawn with people chatting in a bar) which people simply note before moving on; they are often uninhibited, casual and ill thought out."

Would this change if the comment gets massively linked to or slashdotted?

It doesn't help that comments can be viewed from around the world and that each country has it's own ideas of what's OK and what's not. Even worse with the US which thinks it's laws are pre-eminent.

On a practical point of view surly comments fall into the same category as the traditional newspaper letters section.

Everyone is an idiot. Sue us!

Signed,

Everyone at The Register.

Yes, it does actually make some sense. If you don't moderate, you have no control over what's said (and may not be able to for something like LiveJournal where there are far too many comments to screen them). It's an analogy with the phone system, where the phone company is not responsible for things said on the phone even though they transmit them.

But if you exercise *any* editorial control at all, you are deemed to have taken an active part in publishing the comments and are therefore held responsible for them. You have actively decided that that specific comment is to be published.

Did this mean that as soon as the ISP`s start filtering packets for P2P that they will be held responsiable for any traffic that they miss, as they have looked at the packet then allowed it to carry on?

Remember the old saying about what's the definition of 1000 lawyers laying drowned at the bottom of the Sea?

answer: a good start

(note the absence of a joke icon)

.... you make me realise that everyone in existence, past, present and future, is an arsehole.

I would LOVE to not have had to anonymous coward this, but unfortunately I found out that if you google my name my register comments appear pretty early on and I don't really want someone randomly googling me, reading that comment, and thinking I'm serious because they haven't bothered clicking through to the link.

That the Moderatrix has not only the responsibility of ensuring only the cream of the comment crop get published (which has to make you wonder what the quality of the ones that don't get passed her are like)

But she also has the responsibilty of ensuring El Reg doesn't get sued back into the stone ages? Now that's quite some whip she's wielding over her employers!

all Moderatrices will now be summarily sacked as any miniscule drop-off in their performance will be too great a risk for the site owner to mitigate?

"uninhibited, casual, and ill thought out"

Huh? I don't recall publishing my CV!

Huh!? Now I can say I've seen it all... Moderation firm. I wonder how long it will take for them to start outsourcing this too. Or have they already? Are they gonna kill my comment!?

@Sarah Bee

Don't worry, I believe you will still look cute in white hair. Not so sure about the teeth though...

Adrian Boutel, Well "running a forum" in the minds of a Labour Govt is using it as a megaphone but crushing any comments it does not like to hear. Yes Labour speak with forked tongues.

As I recall, both defamation and slander require that you (the person being defamed or slandered) go down in the estimation of more than one person as a result of what somebody else wrote/said. If you can find two ppl that believe what they read on an internet forum about someone then you should probably ask to move to another asylum.

So the law the page must obey is the one in the URL.

.uk? UK law.

.us? US law.

etc.

Allegedly: Just a bit of reg exp.

Allegedly: A quick browser plugin, to remove it again, at the behest of the viewer.

Allegedly: Version 1 Out Now.

Allegedly: sed -i 's/^/Allegedly: / /' comment

Allegedly: then pop into address bar of browser

Allegedly: JavaScript:p=document.getElementsByTagName('p');for(k=0;k<p.length;++k){f=p[k].firstChild;t=f.nodeValue;if(t){t=t.replace(/Allegedly/g,'');void(f.nodeValue=t);}}

Allegedly: Or if you are web maestro (better than master yes?) add it in button form

Allegedly: Available for Weddings, Bar & Bat Mitzvahs, also Discos as well.

Allegedly: sed -i 's/^/Allegedly: / /' comment

Allegedly to:

Allegedly: sed -i 's/^/Allegedly: /' comment