DCUM Threatened with Legal Action Regarding Dr. Alalouf

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff:

I was curious why this was an anonymous forum? I am just learning the whole forum, etc. websites, blogs, but thought that many sites like this are not anonymous. By adding names, then people are responsible for what they write and those reading can believe the information is credible. Would you consider changing to a forum where identifyers are required?

I couldn't figure out how to ad my name to the side, so I am paulaf (those who know me will recognize this from my email address).

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Hi Jeff:

I was curious why this was an anonymous forum? I am just learning the whole forum, etc. websites, blogs, but thought that many sites like this are not anonymous. By adding names, then people are responsible for what they write and those reading can believe the information is credible. Would you consider changing to a forum where identifyers are required?

I couldn't figure out how to ad my name to the side, so I am paulaf (those who know me will recognize this from my email address).

DCUM was originally a mailing list (which still exists with nearly 8,000 subscribers). We set up a forum to handle nanny ads which were overwhelming normal list discussion. Originally, users were required to set up an account and login, but there were complaints that this created a barrier to entry that discouraged use of the nanny forum. Therefore, we removed the login requirement and allowed anonymous posting. As use of the nanny forum grew, we created separate forums for DC, MD, and VA, and also a General Discussion forum. When those got popular, we created more forums. By that time, anonymous posting on the site had become very popular and since many of the topics dealt with personal subjects, users preferred to post anonymously. Every few months, someone proposes that we eliminate anonymous posting, but there is always a huge wave of opposition to it. For several months, we experimented with a "members only" forum that required logging in to post. However, that was a failure.

The second reason is that, as in your case, users have trouble figuring out how to login. That creates a huge administrative workload that we don't have resources to address. Even without a login requirement, we get two or three emails a day asking for help with a login-related issue.

[Anonymous]

For anyone intersted....

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (Section 230) covers "interactive service providers" such that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In other words, you can own a site and invite people to use it but can't be held responsible for their opinions. There are exceptions for Federal laws and Intellectual Propery laws.

At one time, I took a grad class where I had to disect this particular code and I seem to recall that requesting the identity of the person who made the posts is not a easy task in the absence of any actual crime. A letter from a lawyer is not enough and it would be difficult to get a subpoena for such records unless there was an actual civil case and as it is the posts that were removed would never meet the requiurement of defamation or libel. Mean spirited yes, defamation no.