I was recently approached by an attorney for a wealthy businessman that my web site (which is a political bulletin board, in which anyone can post), contained a libelous statement about the businessman.

The attorney said even though I was not the original poster of the questionable message, because it was my site, I could be sued for damages since I was effectively redistributing it on my web site. (ie - Google crawls it and picks it up).

I have over 80,000 postings by more than 1,800 members on a public forum. My question is, am I really liable for what people post? I would like to preserve free speech as much as possible.

The attorney told me I was only liable and could be sued for damages (since it did not concern a public figure) if I was informed about the libelous claim and failed to act on it (as the site owner) - ie removing it from the web site.

I see lots of cases on this web site where companies and individuals have subpeoned Yahoo for posters identity on their message boards, but it looks like they were after the posters, not yahoo.

Can I be held liable? What should I tell attorneys in the future? As my forum grows, I’m sure this will popup again and again….

To me, someone suing me for what a member posts on my site is like suing Phillips Magnavox for something a reporter said on Fox news.

Update: After further googling, I came up with this reference and analysis of Zeran v. America On-Line, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 4th Cir. 1997 which among other conclusions, states:

Zeran is the leading case upholding the CDA’s limitations on the liability of ISPs for messages posted by subscribers or others. The statute simply provides that “No provider or user of an interactive service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 U.S.C. 230 (c) (1). The plaintiff sued AOL alleging, among other things, that it was liable for its delay in removing from its message boards a prankster’s postings which falsely identified Zeran as a promoter offering exceedingly tasteless Oklahoma Federal Office Building commemorative goods. The court held that the statute “creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service. Specifically, Sec. 230 precludes courts from entertaining claims that would place a computer service provider in a publisher’s role.” 129 F.3d at 330. The court also rejected an argument that AOL could be liable as a distributor, rather than as a publisher, holding that the distinction was not valid in this context.

Checkout more info and cases.