Have been reading the actual SOPA bill this morning and am quite concerned about the bills effect on forum owners and blogs that allow commenting.
I have a health forum site and from what I am reading and from what I see it appears that just about anyone can shut off the advertising on my website, shut off my credit card account for product sales, and actually deactivate my domain name (making the site only accessible via IP number) with nothing more than a simple, single complaint. No judge, no discussion, just file a complaint and my site is down?
What is more disturbing is that if someone posts a link in my forums or a comment on my blogs that turns out to link to something like a non-FDA-approved herbal remedy (these get posted a lot in health forums and blogs) my site could be shut down and I could face a 10 million dollar fine just for "hosting" the link in a forum posting.
That's the maximum fine, so I'm hoping they would be compassionate and only fine me maybe two or three million per outbound link.
The good news is that (at least it appears that) the mandatory minimum five year prison term for publishing such a link may not necessarily apply to the forum or blog owner where the poster placed the link, just the individual that owned the actual website that was linked to.
This is great news for blog and forum owners! We might not go to prison for not fully monitoring or blog comments or forum posts, just face a 10 million fine! YEA!
I have a health forum site and from what I am reading and from what I see it appears that just about anyone can shut off the advertising on my website, shut off my credit card account for product sales, and actually deactivate my domain name (making the site only accessible via IP number) with nothing more than a simple, single complaint. No judge, no discussion, just file a complaint and my site is down?
What is more disturbing is that if someone posts a link in my forums or a comment on my blogs that turns out to link to something like a non-FDA-approved herbal remedy (these get posted a lot in health forums and blogs) my site could be shut down and I could face a 10 million dollar fine just for "hosting" the link in a forum posting.
That's the maximum fine, so I'm hoping they would be compassionate and only fine me maybe two or three million per outbound link.
The good news is that (at least it appears that) the mandatory minimum five year prison term for publishing such a link may not necessarily apply to the forum or blog owner where the poster placed the link, just the individual that owned the actual website that was linked to.
This is great news for blog and forum owners! We might not go to prison for not fully monitoring or blog comments or forum posts, just face a 10 million fine! YEA!
