Free to Wail on The Mail
The main stream media continue to struggle to make a living, and from a fellow Raccoonteur comes the extraordinary tale of the Daily Mail’s latest cost cutting exercise.
They have decided to stop moderating comments on their on-line sites.
Now, professional moderation is an alarmingly expensive business and there have been some tasty enterprises built on the back of demand by government sites such as the various NHS web sites, for 24 hour moderation to stop them disappearing under an avalanche of libel or hate mail.
The 1996 Defamation Act says that if a website operator has no knowledge of the contents of a forum or isn’t acting as an editor, as long as they take reasonable care when alerted to a defamatory statement to take it down, they’re in the clear. That doesn’t mean that you can just ignore your web site and let the commentators run riot with their (ill)-considered thoughts, contrary to popular opinion, for that could mean that a court considers you to have been irresponsible and negligent, but the truth is that no-one actually knows the ‘off side rules’ for the game of comment moderation – and the plethora of out-of-court-settlements suggests that no-one is particularly keen to be the first to find out either.
The Daily Mail are going to rely on readers comments to alert them to libelous or racist/sexist posts – which pre-supposes that the public are aware of what is libelous………no doubt the obvious Lord Mandelson is a *** ****** **** comments will be speedily reported and removed, but there are more subtle libels than that………..I give it a week before the first Carter-Ruck writ hits the fan.
In the meantime – fill yer boots. Opportunity abounds.
- First Class posts on Thursday Letters From A Tory
- August 13, 2009 at 9:55 pm
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August 13, 2009 at 6:43 pm -
Finally we’re going to be able to read the vox populi – or maybe the DM will do as many others have done “no comments available for this story”. Thanks Anna for the early warning
hugs and beijinhos
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August 13, 2009 at 7:11 pm -
You wait ages for a post and then three come along at the same time.
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August 13, 2009 at 9:41 pm -
Interesting metaphor for asymmetric warfare.
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August 14, 2009 at 9:21 am -
Also, I wonder what influence Metropolitan International Schools had on their decision.
According to Mr Justice Eady, “… the test for publication, in this context, is whether the relevant Internet intermediary was knowingly involved in the publication of the relevant words…“
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August 14, 2009 at 12:58 pm -
As a techie, I am amazed at how poor the blogging software is that you all use, on blogger, blogspot and all custom systems the MSM use.
The Technorati have already been through this long before “web 2.0″ was pushed by some coke addled numeeja PR hack.
Go and look at slashdot.org for the comment moderation there; the code behind the website is open source and free http://www.slashcode.com/, or even look at kuro5hin.org which runs on Scoop.
Even if you don’t want to use other peoples code, the theory behind the moderation stands, and you won’t be violating a patent if you nick it.
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