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<blockquote data-quote="Dave70968" data-source="post: 2695275" data-attributes="member: 13624">Alright, fine.&nbsp; To be more specific, if he&#039;s not properly versed in all of the relevant laws, he&#039;s probably not aware that 47 U.S.C. 230 (the Communications Decency Act of 1996) grants immunity to providers of an &quot;interactive computer service&quot; (such as a web forum) for the posts of its users; in other words, OSA isn&#039;t liable for the libel that individual users post.&nbsp; This protection does extend to defamatory statements, and such immunity has been upheld in court; see, e.g., Zeran v. AOL, 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997); Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44, 49-53 (D.D.C. 1998); Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, 339 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir. 2003); Batzel v. Smith, 333 F.3d 1018 (9th Cir. 2003); Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal. 4th 33 (2006).If people don&#039;t even know the words they&#039;re using, it&#039;s not a terrible leap to infer that they might lack expertise on the subject.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dave70968, post: 2695275, member: 13624"] Alright, fine. To be more specific, if he's not properly versed in [I]all[/I] of the relevant laws, he's probably not aware that 47 U.S.C. 230 (the Communications Decency Act of 1996) grants immunity to providers of an "interactive computer service" (such as a web forum) for the posts of its users; in other words, OSA isn't [I]liable[/I] for the [I]libel[/I] that individual users post. This protection does extend to defamatory statements, and such immunity has been upheld in court; see, e.g., [I]Zeran v. AOL[/I], 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997); [I]Blumenthal v. Drudge[/I], 992 F. Supp. 44, 49-53 (D.D.C. 1998); [I]Carafano v. Metrosplash.com[/I], 339 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir. 2003); [I]Batzel v. Smith[/I], 333 F.3d 1018 (9th Cir. 2003); [I]Barrett v. Rosenthal[/I], 40 Cal. 4th 33 (2006). If people don't even know the words they're using, it's not a terrible leap to infer that they might lack expertise on the subject. [/QUOTE]

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