Hey.
Would it be my responsibility if users posted items that are illegal? Such as links to file sharing sites? Am I, the owner of the forum, the one that would be liable?
Cheers.
Robert.
Every country has different laws about this, I guess.
There have been a lot of trials in Germany regarding web forums and responsibilities lately.
I think the general gist is that you are responsible if you knew about it and didn't do anything, or at least have to act quickly if someone reports anything to you, i.e. you have to delete illegal content asap and prevent it from happening again (e.g. by banning the user, or lowering file size limits for attachments).
MyBB logs IP addresses of posters, so if something really bad happens in your forum, you may be forced to give out such data to police.
If your forum is not maintained at all, give some trustworthy users moderator access, and if you don't have such users, better turn it off completely. Spammers and criminals are systematically searching the internet for abandoned platforms they can abuse to their own ends. And if something happens, wether you are responsible or not, first thing the police will do is shut you and your site down.
It's easy to get sued for something that happens in your forums these days, so better not risk it in the first place. In most forums I know, when someone happens to post a link to a file sharing site, moderators take out the link almost immediately.
Thanks for your reply. I have got a few very trust worthy moderators.
Ill just keep an eye out for anything happening on my forum.
Thanks again for the guidance.
Cheers.
Robert.
Depends. If you add a disclaimer to your footer or something saying that the content is property of the poster, and add to the licence agreement on signup that you won't be liable, then when they agree to it, even if they don't read it, because they have agreed that they'll take responsibility, you probably won't be liable for it. Maybe if you can prove that it was someone who signed up just to cause trouble, they probably wouldn't do anything, otherwise I could go on 100 forums, post up loads of illegal content, and they'd all get sued... wouldn't happen.
Most of the time, yes you are. At 99% of web hosts, you have agreed to a terms and conditions document which usually has a section outlining what material cannot be found on your site.
Yeah. You are the host, so governments make it your responsibility to moderate everything. It would be nice to live in a world where the people who did it were the only ones held accounted for.
Could somebody give me an example what to add to my license agreement? I'm have no idea how to write legal things.
Thanks for all the responses. It looks like I need to moderate alot then.
You may write something like this:
All messages are owned by their respective posters. Blabla site owner cannot be responsible for copyright infringement and illegal content posted by users.
What that be satisfactory?
Thanks.
EDIT: (oh, and how do I edit the license agreement?)
I doubt that would do any good against your webhost which has a terms and conditions against illegal content on YOUR site
