Opinion Website Rules?

[Raven_Writer]

Originally Posted by Max Lobovsky

You definitley do not need an intro page with a TOS on it. There are many reasons why you don't have to worry about legal action, but let me just give you a few.

1. Libel does not really cover defamatory opinions, just false statements. The 1st ammendment guarantees your right to state your opinions, just not to lie about someone else. (In fact, you have to intentionally lie to be guilty of libel, see the Wikipedia page)
2. There are literally millions of blogs and personal websites full of personal opinions with no such disclaimers (try http://maddox.xmission.com)
3. Your page is probably going to be way too low traffic for it to be worth anyone's time to bother with you.

If it ever does reach any appreciable size, and you are still worried, follow the trend of other large websites with disclaimers and put a small link at the bottom to a "legal" page.

1. So, basically, all I got to do is state factual opinions (or ways to justify my opinions)?

2. I'm aware of Maddox One of my favorite sites for this stuff.

3. I put a lot of thought into this one


I think what I'll do is just take it down from the front page, and put it into the legal page (just for the heck of it really).


Thanks for your response.

[Max Lobovsky]

Your welcome. Sure, keep it. Since you already have it written, no sense in getting rid of it.

Originally Posted by Raven_Writer

1. So, basically, all I got to do is state factual opinions (or ways to justify my opinions)?

Interestingly enough, a supreme court ruling set a precedent by requiring libel to not just be fictitious, but intentionally fictitious (or so Wikipedia tells us). It might be hard for Dan Rather to pretend that he, or his sources were not intentionally fictitious, but for a small website run by Joe Shmoe (in the eyes of the law) with no real reputation or expected quality, I'm sure it's very easy to argue that any fictitious statement was not intended.