Just a couple of comments here:
- I think the node should not have been removed.
Auto-censorship is even worse than censorship, it
means that the MPAA has succeed in scaring us and
that effectively they are the law.
I know merlyn has been burned by a big company
going after him, but I
don't think its appropriate to let this fact
rule the site's policy.
Plus IANAL but I don't think you risk much
until you receive a C&D letter
BTW, although Corion trick is neat I don't think
it would protect the site in court. HTML encoding
can hardly be described as a protection
mechanism.
- As for the janitors, I completely
agree with the name change. We should never act as
editors but the temptation is there every time we
touch a note, so yes, janitors is fine.
- And finally, as I raised the point about the
janitors responsability, I don't know the
US law, and the French law is pretty murky on the
subject, but it seems to me that there is an important
distinction between somebody who does not interfere
with (or filter) the content that's published, like
an ISP or a telco, and someone who does, like a publisher.
vroom is somewhere in between, but the more he
interferes with the content and the more he moves
towards liability. Actually the best defense might be that
he does not touch the content, completely handing over
this task to (possibly non-US to avoid them
being in trouble!) janitors. This looks
dumb but it might legally be the best strategy to
make it the official policy for the site. Not that
I think that it would do any good to PM as a community
mind you, but caving in to the mere shadow of a
threat really bothers me.