Hello All,<br /><br />I was wondering if someone could point me to some good examples of disclaimers and "Terms of Service" at other sites - perhaps your own.<br /><br />I am preparing a forum to discuss "mandatory activity fees" as well as other issues that students at my college are concerned with.<br /><br />Just for peace of mind, I want to ensure that students who post to this forum indemnify me from all liablility of what they post. <br /><br />For example, if a student decides to slam a professor with false (or even exagerated) remarks, I don't want to be sued for defamation.<br /><br />In short, I just want to provide a means for a community of students to share their concerns freely but maturely.<br /><br />I'm sure many folks here include such legal verbage on their sites.<br /><br />Any suggestions/examples would be greatly appreciated.<br /><br />Thanks,<br />Mike<br /><br />

Yeah, well I sure hope we all do have such terms of use "fine print" on our forums/sites... if anyone doesn't, please do yourself a favor and spend a few hours and make a public terms of use policy for your site, and save some trouble down the line if anything ever comes up...<br /><br />But, while you need a terms of use disclaimer, I figure you might be interested in this little bit on the actual laws of forums, in re to your concern about defamation:<br /><br />The United States Congress passed in 1996 United States Code 230 which has a key provision: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This congressionally imposed limitation goes on to say in section USC 230 (d)(3): “No cause of action may be brought and no liability imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.”<br /><br />What this means is that in fact, as an operator of a discussion forum there is the strongest possible wording of a Federal Law which prevents you from being held liable for any of the content posted on your forum.<br /><br />But, a disclaimer is more than a good idea… the best example I have found is at: <A HREF="http://intelforums.com/help/disclaimer.htm" target="_new">http://intelforums.com/help/disclaimer.htm</A><br /><br />Hope this helps,<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]<A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>

That's an excellent reference. I think a good place for this is in the FAQ and I also have a couple of other additions in there along the following lines:<br /><br />Is there a code of conduct I should be aware of?<br />------------------------------------------------<br />I don't want to accidentally break any rules.<br /> <br />In line with standard web practice, we don't allow dangerous or offensive material or links. Young people visit the board so nothing "Adult" please. <br /><br /><br />I can't login. How do I delete the bad cookie?<br />----------------------------------------------<br />My Cookie has Crumbled. How can I delete it?<br /> <br />If your cookie goes bad and you want to delete it because you can't login any more, you can find it for Netscape at Program Files\Netscape\Users\yourname\cookies.txt. Delete the two lines containing "/cgi-bin/wwwthreads" and your name and password. For IE, in WindowsTemporary Internet Files, delete "wwwthreads/ - Cookie:yourname@www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads" <br /><br />[]http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif[/]

Yeah, forum rules are also somewhere on intel's site... you should have guidelines posted either in the FAQ or somewhere on your forum.<br /><br />Good line about the cookie.<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]<A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>