You run a message board

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was going to post this in ATMB specifically relating to the this one, but I thought I might generalise it.

You run a message board hosted in your country, and you get a subpoena requesting you release some of your logs to your countries police. Not wanting to be held in contempt of court, you do this.

Would you accept informal requests from law enforcement in your country? How about requests from other countries? And would you treat Sweden differently to Somalia?

Personally I would give away as little information while remaining legal as most countries have laws I disagree with, and I don’t intend to help them enforce them.

2

Is this a hypothetical or a solicitation for legal advice?

3

[QUOTE=Happy Lendervedder]
Is this a hypothetical or a solicitation for legal advice?
[/QUOTE]

Exclusively the former.

4

Why not list on your message board that all logs are systematically deleted/erased/destroyed 24 hours hours after creation.

For me, unless you have a bonafide warrant legal in my country, I would tell you to go fly a kite.

5

Not from the police but a lawyer that threatened me with thousands of dollars worth of legal penalties. 5 or 6 years ago I was moderating a message board for a popular NASCAR sim. One of the forums allowed folks to show off the paint jobs they had made. This particular forum also allowed folks to download the paint jobs to their computer to use in the sim. One paint job had a car sponsored by Sunkist Orange Soda and it was a rather nice paint job to boot. The message from the attorney threatened big penalties if I did not remove the offending image and file from the server, have everyone that downloaded the paint job delete from their computer, send them the name of the person that painted and posted the image and file and those that downloaded the file.

At the time, I used 2 names on the forum, my real name as the mod and a username (racer72 just like here) for general posting. To keep the peace, I did remove the image but I moved the file download to another location in the forum. I also posted the email from the attorney and allowed the forum members to give their opinions on the matter. I also sent the lawyer an invoice for the free advertising that his client received due to posting on the forum. I never heard from the attorney again. And who was the person that posted the offending image and file? A forum member that went by racer72.

6

You Run A Message Board sounds like the title of what would be the single worst installment of the Choose Your Own Adventure series ever.

“If you decide to ban the user, turn to page 27. If you decide to give him another chance, turn to page 91.”

7

[QUOTE=Snooooopy]
You Run A Message Board sounds like the title of what would be the single worst installment of the Choose Your Own Adventure series ever.

“If you decide to ban the user, turn to page 27. If you decide to give him another chance, turn to page 91.”
[/QUOTE]

Page 27

“I’m not going to put up with BananaJohn44760’s crap anymore!” you think to yourself, as you push the little grey ‘BAN’ button. “He’s posted inappropriate links in response to kitten questions for the last time!”

As you go about your other board moderation duties, you feel good about yourself. You’re really getting the hang of keeping things running smoothly and keeping the riff-raff from disrupting lively discussions.

You go up and get another doughnut. When you get back you your computer, you click on that thread about boogers you’d been looking forward to reading all morning. Except, instead of opening up as it should, your screen reads “The page you are looking for is not available. Please refresh your screen to see if that solves the problem.”

You hit refresh, but you get the same message. You hit the back button to return to the forum. You click on another thread, but you see the same mysterious message.

“What’s going on?” you ask yourself as you click on thread after empty thread. You get a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.

“All the threads have been deleted!” you scream. “All 20,000 posts are gone from my message board!”

Then you notice a new thread pop up at the top of the forum. It’s titled “Hey Jerkface!”

You nervously click on it.

It reads:

You just messed with the wrong motherf****** hacker, b****! Ban me? Say good bye to your little message board! Lolllll!!!11
Your friend, BananaJohn44760

You sit in silence for a minute before you notice the giant drops of tears falling on the powdered sugar on your keyboard.

The End

8

Frankly, I’m too ignorant to consider a subpoena an informal request.