Just because we can, doesn't mean we should

Yahoo! won a round today in a lawsuit in which a woman blamed it for nude photos and a bogus profile of her that were posted on the Web site without her knowledge by her (crummy) ex-boyfriend, who went to pains to make it appear she was looking for sex online. (The facts of the story can be found on SignOnSanDiego and elsewhere. ) It troubled me that Yahoo, after the material was pointed out, took months to take the material down, and then only after a lawsuit, but Yahoo's a huge company and these things can be hard to control.

The court ruled that Yahoo wasn't to blame, citing the federal law that doesn't hold Internet operators responsible for material people post material on their sites. The argument is that such Internet postings are communications like the words exchanged in a phone call, not edited material like what appears in, say, the newspaper.

My point is, so what? I mean it's great not to have that legal exposure, but, well, just because you can publish something, doesn't mean you should.

This comes up in my work life in the form of anonymous comments by readers. Some are poignant memorials to the recently departed. Some helpfully offer information or insights or point out errors. But a lot are just plain nasty: Vicious, racist, intolerant, threatening, you name it.

Our publication of such comments is protected by the same law cited in the Yahoo case. In fact, the more we edit the material, the more liable we make the company, the more we are exposed to a lawsuit. Deleting comments is OK. (Overly empowered commenters call that "censoring.") Editing? Nope.

Now a site like the one I work for probably has to allow comments. There's no good way short of demanding credit card numbers to force people to use their real names. And, while I'd prefer to have ever single comment that appears on the site moderated before publication by a responsible adult, I know that's probably unrealistic, given staffing limitations.

But yes, we moderate comments. Yes, we delete problematic ones as swiftly as we can and yes, we expel problem children. And we no longer allow anonymous comments below photo galleries, especially those lacking captions, as commenters, like nature, abhor a vacuum.

I ask commenters to imagine it was their loved one in the story about the crash, or in that photo from Mardi Gras, or being charged with that crime. How would they feel then? It doesn't always work.

I know that commenters are faithful readers who contribute material and attract other readers to our site, an important editorial and business consideration. But we don't have to allow their worst impulses to drag down the tone and quality of our site, or to use our pages to hurt people with words they probably wouldn't say in public or with their names attached.

Sure, we can publish whatever they write. The law says we can. That doesn't mean we should.