Are there any laws in the US against pedophilia stories hosted on a website? I run a publicly editable website where users can post up stories a various sort. Some are pretty normal, some are sexual, some are a bit perverted, and recently some have drifted into the pedophilia realm. No images or videos can be uploaded to this site. Are there any laws that I might be breaking by hosting this content?
Two questions, here: Can a text story be obscene under the law? As one who hosts a website, can you be held liable for the content of a site? Can a text story be legally obscene The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit published their opinion on United States of America v. Frank Russell McCoy on March 12, 2015. Mr. McCoy maintained a website, young-stuff.com, from his home. He authored or edited more than 200 graphic stories detailing "sexual abuse, rape, and torture of young children." Mr. McCoy was indicted in June, 2007 and found guilty. The appeals court affirmed the conviction. Both the initial trial court and the appeals court found Mr. McCoy's stories "lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Can a web site's host be held liable for the content of a site? Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says that 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. It also states that no internet entity has immunity from federal criminal law. Section 230 has been found to apply to intermediaries of third-party content. Generally, most assume that when the content is simply hosted and not moderated by the web site then there is no liability for the provider. That's not always the case and is determined by whether the host of the web site is considered a provider of interactive computer services or an information content provider. Any person responsible "in whole or in part...for the creation or development of information" is an information content provider. Which are you? In Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that roommates.com was not immune under Section 230 because they asked questions of their users that helped facilitate a potentially illegal search under the Fair Housing Act. They, therefore, helped create the content the site hosted. The question will ultimately rest on whether someone decides the content is obscene enough to be prosecuted and then if you, the site's host, aided in creating the content. This definitely requires the assistance of competent legal counsel.
This was attributed to Dumblaws.com, which is now mercifully nonexistent. It is false, as is the supposed law against fishing for whales on Sunday (seriously? Whales in Ohio?). If someone makes such a claim and gives a specific citation like &quot;ORC 1533.02&quot;, you can look that law up. Otherwise, you can go to the state's repository of laws, which is searchable (not all states are as enlightened). No laws mention &quot;whale&quot; or &quot;housefly&quot;, and only 23 address &quot;fly&quot;, only referring to insects in a couple of cases where e.g. bakery showcases must keep out dust and flies. You might take on this collection, hosted by a law firm. I haven't bothered to check if &quot;It is illegal to drive a camel on the highway&quot; in Nevada – that a least verifiably refers to a law that did exist.
I would probably have a legal disclaimer out of an abundance of caution. That being said, you have a right to free speech via First Amendment guarantees. While that right is not absolute and some words “by their very utterance” cause injury or incite an immediate breach of peace, and do not receive constitutional protection, (there is the old adage you do not have the right to shout fire in a crowded movie theater). This (your blog) is not that. To take it to its logical (or illogical) extreme, there are many things on the internet, in magazines, scholarly articles, etc. that could injure someone or cause damage in the event that one who was not qualified or competent to perform the action described undertook to do so. A child could burn themselves following the directions on a mac and cheese box but they shouldn't be cooking in the first place. The same rings true for high voltage electricity - a non-licensed electrician should probably not create a high voltage power supply. But, will some? Yes. But you are not liable for printing a blog about the practice. On another but related note, if you are a licensed electrician your licensing authority may require that you take precautions to ensure you do not inadvertantly direct others to engage in practices of licensed professionals that could cause harm by giving them information. I doubt this but I don't know because I am not an electrician. As far as could you be liable for writing it....under our legal system you can be sued under a theory of negligence for just about any action someone thinks was unsafe or causes injury. And you never know what a jury will do. But I think that to sue someone for simply writing something would be fairly easily dismissed through a motion for summary judgment by a competent attorney in the event you got sued. If everything a person wrote, that if followed by an unqualified person resulted in injury, resulted in liability for damages than it would have a chilling effect on their First Amendment right to free speech. That said, I go back to my original statement that it couldn't hurt to have a simple liability waiver for extra protection. It could be something as simple as: "The information contained herein is not mean to be comprehensive and is for informational purposes only. You should not undertake to perform anything described herein without adequate training and/or supervision. The Author disclaims any responsibility for any injury, damage, or loss as a result of reliance upon the information found on this site/blog." If you do use a liability waiver, make sure it is bold and obvious. Otherwise, it can backfire!
Does criticizing public figures constitute libel especially in a private group? It depends on the specifics, but a priori your description suggests that the defense of honest opinion would be applicable. This is regardless of whether the subject is a public figure and regardless of whether the statements were in private --albeit non-privileged-- communications. Case law surely provides guidelines or precedents on how the details and circumstances of the events would fare on the parties' legal position, but I am not knowledgeable of UK/English law. Does X have a counterclaim for illegally accessing the data? The matter seemingly depends on how the religious leader had or gained access to the data. Even if he gained access by stealing or hacking a device or account, X would not have standing to [counter-]sue unless the device or account belongs to X. Be mindful of the possibility that third party might have made the disclosure to the religious leader. In that case, actionability (if any) of the disclosure only encompasses the third party, not the religious leader. X's intent that his statements stay only among the participants does not necessarily imply that participants' disclosure elsewhere is unlawful.
You've really got two questions here: 1) "Is it an invasion of privacy to know that I'm using an ad blocker?", and 2) "Is it discrimination to refuse service based on what software I'm running?". Taking them in order: Because of how HTTP/HTML works, there are essentially two ways for a server operator to know what software you are running. Your browser announces that it's running something. This usually takes the form of a modified User-Agent header. I'm not aware of any privacy laws that consider "Person A told me something" to be an invasion of Person A's privacy. They guess it based on the actions your browser takes. For example, if the website gets a request for a page, and the site's ad network does not get a matching request for an ad, the server deduces that the user is running an ad blocker. Since this is based on things that the server operator could reasonably be expected to be informed of, it isn't an invasion of privacy under any law I'm aware of. Is it discrimination? Yes. But not all discrimination is illegal. In general, only discrimination based on protected categories (race, sex, etc.) is prohibited, and I can't imagine a jurisdiction making "choice of browser add-ons" to be one of those categories, not least because it's something the person being discriminated against can easily change.
Using Tor is not illegal. Nor is hiding your IP address, which is - among other things - what Tor does. Going to .onion links is not illegal. What you find and interact with at those .onion sites may be illegal. See Law StackExchange Is it legal to host a directory of .onion urls? Running a Tor Relay is not illegal. That could change. Running an Exit Relay could expose your IP address as the Relay, so that could lead investigators of illegal activity to you. Read https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en As always, check your state laws http://statelaws.findlaw.com/criminal-laws/computer-crimes.html And do your own research with the links above and at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network) and at https://www.torproject.org/
That's an old idea that has been tried several times before (such as the first, being Unvarnished: Website Lets You Review People (And Trash Them) | HuffPost, which no longer exists); and one of the latest incarnations is Peeple (mobile application - Wikipedia). There are lots of legal liabilities, including defamation and harassment/stalking, even with the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act | Electronic Frontier Foundation which (mostly) protects the website owner from others' speech posted on the site (your mileage may vary due to jurisdiction). The only way such a site would survive is to do what Peeple and other sites have done: greatly limit the speech allowed, such as limiting to only positive reviews, giving the subject complete control over what does appear on their profile, only allowing "opt-in" profiles, verify identities, etc. You would have to implement full GDPR compliance; but various lawsuits will either shut you down before you get far enough to launch or soon after and force you to greatly limit the scope of the site. Most lawyers would advise you to find something else to do with your time and money.
First I should point out that the Google question is about a different situation, the "snippet" issue where a tiny part of a web page is redistributed, where the issue of resolved in the US by appeal to the "fair use" defense. The proposed scenario as written here is broader since it would go beyond a couple of lines, and goes up to the limit of copy an entire web page. That is copyright infringement, with or without an associated link. Copyright protection is not just about attribution, it is about control. If you can limit your copying appropriately, you may survive under a fair use analysis; but you need to hire a lawyer with experience in copyright litigation to vet your notions of what is "a small amount" etc.