[Jim Robinson]

Guess we'll find out if someone attempts to use it against me in some future lawsuit. Hey, this is a big board with thousands of people from the general public posting thousands of posts every day. We make no attempt to vet the posters and absolutely no attempt to read each and every post much less to research them for libel, slander, etc. That would be impossible. And the moderators are all volunteers and only fill in when they can. There's no way we can see everything. We do not guarantee that every post that should be pulled is pulled. None of us spend much time reading the threads. As moderators, we usually only react to abuse reports, and even then we don't get to all of them or act on all of them. Some of these reports come in on threads or series of threads containing thousands of posts with many interlocking and overlapping long-running feuds amd dozens or even hundreds of warring posters with constantly changing alliances and contradictory opinions fading in and out. Way too much for me to keep track of. Sorry, we are not a court of law and we are not an investigative agency and we are not all seeing, all knowing miracle workers. All we can do is try to keep the worst of it out and the worst of the trolls and violent posters out.

[olorin]

As I understand defamation law, your duty only kicks in once you have notice of alleged offending material. I think a good analogy can be drawn with ISPs, in that they are generally only liable if they fail to act on alleged offending material. Thus, until you received notice either internally or from some external source, neither you nor FreeRepublic LLC sould not be liable for defamation.