User Generated Content Liability and MUDs.
 

While discussing the reviews, Matt made some good points about website liability for user generated content. That thread is here:



I did a quick search on "User generated content liability" and found this article:



Outside of reviews, it occurred to me that this can all equally apply to the user generated "content" on our MUDs - we "moderate" the MUDs by removing channel access and/or access to the game completely when we have repeat trouble makers in the games.

Has anyone ever had any legal issues along these lines? I've never heard of it within a MUD, but it's very possible based on that article.

Re: User Generated Content Liability and MUDs.
 

There was a case in Germany in June that was really frightening if you're Germany-based.



Essentially, the German court ruled that forum operators are responsible for anything posted on their forums, whether they were aware of the comments or not.

Scary.

--matt

Re: User Generated Content Liability and MUDs.
 

The article seems to focus on user generated content that infringes on someones copyright/trademark. For example YouTube has a lot of "user generated content". Much of that content probably infringe on copyrights as it is music videos, parts of commercial movies etc that the user who uploaded it didn't have copyright of.

Re: User Generated Content Liability and MUDs.
 

Would that mean that the forum moderators are responsible for private messages in the forum as well?

Re: User Generated Content Liability and MUDs.
 

I have no idea. I didn't actually read the entire case and don't know if that was addressed or not.

--matt