David Herron .com

I run several blogs and a forum, and have been taking sponsorship for a long time. Blogging is a time consuming thing and it's therefore necessary to seek income to support one in doing this. But as in all things when a company dangles money in front of you there is the possibility of enticement to sell your soul for filthy lucre. In other words it's plausible that taking advertising on a website will subvert the message of that website to suit the advertising.

Is an operator of a message board on the Internet liable for whatever the users of said message board say? What if you run a message board, and someone registers on the site and begins posting horrible statements about someone else. What liability does the message board operator have? What responsibility do they have?

The other day I had a brainstorm(fart?) related to the stability of the files I'm storing on hard disks. I have a lot of stuff I'm storing where the only copy is on one disk. If that disk were to fail the files would be lost. Disaster would strike, flames would fall from the heavens, cats and dogs would lie together, and terror would reign for a thousand years, all if my files were lost. Something like that.

Today I'm in at a conference, an unconference that is, about "Online Community". For years I've had this idea of using online community as a means of social change, that by helping people connect on a given topic they can use an online community forum to discuss that topic, resolve problems, help each other learn the topic, etc. An online community focused on a specific topic can focus attention on that topic.