Long before I started this website I ran and still do a Internet Based BBS system. Which prior to the Internet boom was a dial up system. When modems were king and the in thing to do was to dial into BBS systems which were home grown and could consist of 1 dial up line or a 100. Mine fell in between that range and at one point we had nearly 5000 paying users. The system highlighted message conference, mailing list, Shareware, along with rudimentary ANSI based text games and whatever else the system operator could scrounge up to encourage people to call back.
Those message bases were distributed through a network of similar systems (Fidonet) that called each every night to send and receive the new messages. Similar to USENET but much slower. The network was made up of 20,000+ nodes and each node was run by some guy or gal running a hobby BBS. The message bases were very active and often got heated. From time to time someone would threaten to sue another person over a comment or flame but was mostly hype and cheap talk. Until one guy had enough and hired a real lawyer.
I was a party of that lawsuit as it involved a user of my system that was the direct target of the libel suit. He had supposedly slandered the person filing the complaint. In that court case case I was able to get a court order in my favor and it came in several parts.
1-I was the transporter of data and could not be held liable for another persons comments
2-Due to my privacy policy and some other legal terms I can’t remember I did not have to reveal the subscribers address etc.
As it turned out since we had enforced real usernames on the system through a verification process the party filing the lawsuit was able to locate the offending party and have him served. Within several months the case was thrown out. But that made me very aware of just how nasty people can be at times and if they don’t watch what they say could end up in court.
To the heart of this commentary is that a court has ruled that mailing list host and providers are immunized from most defamation suits. What is funny is I think I have almost the same ruling in my safety deposit box from my case almost 10 years ago.
The technology may change a little but oh my how some things stay the same. [Cnet]