Abuse Policies

[jproulx]

Following up on my last post, we've just released our abuse policies for public consumption.

There is a big disclaimer attached to the page that I'll repeat here:
All material on this page is currently Draft quality and is subject to change at any time. The LiveJournal Terms of Service is always the definitive guide to site policies; this material

Comments

[cyns]

Which gives you the right to change the policy at any little twich you guys have, right?

Yeah. Nothing changed.

[trbleclef]

Because they are soliciting feedback from the community in order to solidify [their] positions?

God forbid!

[cyns]

History repeats itself.

I'm positively sure they've set rules at one point or another, only to change them when somebody caused an uprising, then set more rules, only to do the same thing over and over. Re dun dancy.

http://web.archive.org/web/19991127124002/www.livejournal.com/disclaimer.bml

That CLEARLY shows the differences from one point to another. They don't even define it as the "Tos". The rules won't stop here. They'll keep morphing and morphing until everyone moves over to greatestjournal.

[erin]

But that was with 16K journals. 5 Mil now.... with that much of an increase in userbase I don't think its an unfair assumption to say that things do evolve and change over time.

[eurekagray]

It looks pretty good, thanks for codifying these sorts of situations. Hopefully it'll help build consistency.

Re: lawyer

[volkris]

That's the big question.

I would say to definitely have a lawyer, and multiple ones. LiveJournal loves to claim that the TOS is there to protect the company, but the reality is that sometimes the document would have the opposite effect if not done properly.

This stuff is hard enough for lawyers to figure out; let's not have meer mortals mucking about it in.

Re: lawyer

[volkris]

Has a lawyer confirmed this? :)

But anyway, you're very much incorrect here. This isn't about whether LiveJournal can terminate an account at will, so much as it's about making sure LJ complies with relevant regulations in the right ways. If LiveJournal writes its regulations one way, for example, it would not be liable for the actions of its users, but written slightly differently it would be considered an accomplice. Even the at will termination of accounts is not necessarily completely ok in today's legal environment.

There's a reason people involve lawyers in paperwork. It can save them a whole lot of time and trouble later down the road. Especially if LJ is going to claim that these rules are in place for legal reasons it needs to make sure it actually understands those legal reasons.

[mcfnord]

Society always benefits from transparent governance, and steps like these strengthen LJ's global scalability. Thanks.

[uozaki]

Invasion of privacy is covered... Is there anything about libel/slander? A person may skirt around IoP by not using more than a name, but they can still do some nasty damage if it's very clear who they're talking about. And that, I think, should be reportable by third party, as it's a legal matter, not just social.

[silvermask]

I'm curious - could a third party legally sue for slander (assuming that said "third party" is really a third party and not, say, the surviving relative of someone who died or anything like that)?

I would think it best to stick as closely as possible with the law on this one. (I assume that LJ Abuse would avise complainants to contact the subject of the libel/slander ASAP, of course).

[uozaki]

No idea. I imagine they'd have to do it on behalf of someone, and in order to stand up it would probably help for them to be related. My sister suing on my behalf, for example, as opposed to my best friend. But if the friend saw it happening and didn't want to upset the person being slandered, maybe.

Which takes me back to my first question - where does it fit in? It doesn't seem to be covered under regular IoP. (Yeah. Third parties are just a side thing, though. I don't know. It was just an idle thought. From the Actions listed in there, though, I don't know that Abuse would say anything besides 'not your problem, sorry'.)

[suppafly]

I'm curious - could a third party legally sue for slander (assuming that said "third party" is really a third party and not, say, the surviving relative of someone who died or anything like that)?

No.