German Ruling Suggests Forums Must Be Moderated
Via OUT-LAW.com.
Forums are an "especially dangerous feature" of websites, according to a ruling published last week by a Hamburg district court. Heise Online says it has been found liable for content that appeared on forums, despite the content being removed on request.
Heise ran an article that criticised the business practices of a Munich company called Universal Boards. Some participants in its accompanying forum appear to have encouraged as many people as possible to download a file as often as possible from Universal Boards to disrupt its servers. The company sent a warning to Heise to refrain from "actively disseminating" these reader comments.
Universal Boards went to court and obtained what Heise called a temporary restraining order – presumably to prevent similar postings in future. Heise says the court did not believe its argument that pre-vetting more than 200,000 comments per month would be an unreasonable burden.
Heise plans to appeal the ruling. Its legal adviser, Joerh Heirdich, said: "Moderation of user comments would mean the end of the fledgling forum culture in Germany."
More here.
posted by Fergie @ 4/24/2006 11:47:00 AM
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