CelticSubM
Posts: 102
Joined: 3/12/2004 Status: offline
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CM isn't selling images, so any civil or criminal liability connected with anything posted would lie solely with the poster under US law. Section 230 of the Communctions Decency Act is very explicit on that point: "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. " Of courses, laws differ in other nations. Just about anything is likely to be "illegal" in some sense, somewhere in the world. CM is based in the States, and the ablity of foreign courts to enforce judgments here would be very limited. At worst, CM might be barred from having a direct presence in some countries, but it doesn't really need that, so that's not likely to be an issue. It's much more likely that CM and similar sites could be "destroyed" by an influx of commercial listings. Many Usenet groups now consist of very little besides commercial postings. It could happen here. CM's terms of service do state "You may not use the Website to advertise products or services", but little effort is made to enforce that provision. Ostensibly, the site relies on user flagging of profiles, but there are lots of profiles with terms such as "financial domination" or "professional dominatrix" that have been up for months or years.
< Message edited by CelticSubM -- 12/2/2009 2:09:05 AM >
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