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.
