If the story is true they should theoretically have no right to complain. That is a perfect world however and not the one we live in.

If it was me I'd go on the offensive and tell the world what a slimy thing they are trying to do in squashing all negative press about their company.

Some similar cases have popped up this week, most notably at http://www.whitehouse.org, who was threatened about an unflattering bio of Lynne Cheney by Whitehouse lawyers, who is a public figure and open to parody. (ACLU lawyers eagerly took that case). And of course the Crossroads mall incident where the mall arrested a man for wearing a peace t-shirt. The charges were dropped in that case due to massive negative publicity for the mall and it's owners.

I am very curious to see the offending post and to know what slimeball company is asking you to throw away your God-given birth right of communication just to protect their reputation to sell more crap.

They seem to be paranoid about negative publicity, if it was me I'd give it to them. But that's me, you should decide what is the best way to handle this for yourself.

I'm upset by this and I call myself Big Brother, the irony is thick.

http://www.newshax.com

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Just thought I'd pop in with a comment here. The above statement is a misconception. I used to live with a lawyer, and here's the deal: the First Amendment to the US Constitution only prevents the government from abridging your freedom to speak. It does not prevent actions such as the one referenced. You can be sued under libel or slander laws for some writings or statements, depending on the nature of the writing or statement.

It's unclear to me if the original poster is in Canada or the US, so the whole First Amendment point might be moot anyway.

If the company claims the post is inaccurate, then it would seem to me that the web site's best action is to post the company's rebuttal. It gives them the opportunity to be heard but allows the original post to stand. People are then free to make up their own minds, and the company, it would then seem, no longer has grounds to complain.

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Aerobrick

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a lawyer, and you shouldn't construe this as legal advice.

Remember, anyone can sue you for anything even if they're wrong. A disclaimer will let readers know that your not responsible for content provided by others. Yahoo and other have 'not so favorable' content all over the place but, they don't take it down just because someone asks.

What you need to do is open a dialog with the company threatening suit and ask them if this post exposes copyrighted material, material covered by the DMCA, or if it infringes on any IP they may own.

If it is, I would suggest they give specific example of how it infringes then consider removing the post. If they just don't like that someone said something negative, then they are SOL. It's call the First Amendment to the Constitution, Freedom of speech.

Let them know that if they want to go after the poster directly, then have them get a court order to expose the posters information stored in your system. That's all your obligated to do unless there's a copyright or other infringement.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, Sunsnapper! I'll post it as a footer and link to one of the Q&A in our FAQ section.

Maybe you can add a link in your footer. One to link to your privacy policy, one to link to your terms of use, one to link to a disclaimer, etc.

Not sure about the legal issues. Check out a site like amazon.com or epinions.com and read their disclaimers. They allow user reviews of products, which one might imagine might be negative at times.

Good luck.

Okay, my xoops2 site is up for 1 week and I already have someone threatening us with legal action if a particular post is not removed -- because it casts their organization in an unfavourable light. (you can read more details below)

WHAT I NEED TO KNOW IS...

(1) Will a simple disclaimer normally do the trick? If so, are there any disclaimers you would recommend (or have worked to ward-off the lawyers for your site)?

(2) If so, how to incorporat it into our site? (xoops2 has a built in disclaimer at registration, but it's not visible to a visitor until they register)

Thanks!

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Here are the details...
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We run a free membership website where we try to post news/info/discussions that is relevant and helpful to our members. I posted an article today that pointed out this organization's much higher prices in Canada (for certain products) when compared to the prices charged by their Philippines parent organization -- even after the exchange rate has been taken into consideration.

The Canadian office claims that our article makes it look like they are gouging our Canadian members -- when the additional prices simply reflected the additional cost they've incurred to import certain items into Singapore.

My contention is that historically these product-types have been offered by this organization (as well as other in the same industry) at a price that is merely reflective of our exchange rate, and no more.

guys, the red text in Swisslyons' post DOES work with XOOPS 2!

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What file is this code in?

And if you want a working code example, check out squirrelmail's spell checker module, it is incredibly slick.

Here we go:

http://www.zend.com/zend/spotlight/spellchecking.php