So if a message board owner operates a site

which publishes defamatory material over a long period of time about a certain individual or individuals, having been told to cease and desist, and having been told (thanks Linz4me) that a particular group are using the publication opportunity to breach the law, stalk other board users and their families, with the intended purpose of defamatory harassment, likely to incite hatred and most probably violence - do the board owners (and their attendant defamatory users) rate higher on the damages scale if successfully sued? The answer has to be yes.

I've already seen from TM some head in the sand stuff about responsibility, ducking and diving, a keen propensity to lay blame elsewhere (anywhere in fact it seems, such is the level of self-preservation.) Added to the mix are self-defeating arguments that TM, as an example, are not a publisher, although they employ 'moderaters' - a modern term for editors, who pass judgement on editorial comment of a number of types, including (yes) defamation.

I've got an idea for TM, if they don't want to be seen as publishers and editors, then don't have moderators and don't have rules about what may or may not be posted - don't sit in the middle, a bob each way, and expect anything other than scrutiny of what they actually are - an Internet publisher. Oh goodness how sad for TM. They only made a profit of 93 million in 2009 and yet they don't have the 'resources' to pre-edit anything published on their boards.

I'll believe that just like I believe in squadrons of under resourced pigs flying over. But then the mixture becomes more obscure because their site of publication is called 'Community' like a message board in a supermarket or letters to the editor in a rural newspaper. They want to be members of a big happy family and ignore that some of the 'kids' are out stalking, threatening people and their families and posting defamatory comment and suppressed material - how simply cutey pie, all sort of homely. And big daddy will say 'I had no idea it was going on.' How very sweet, poor big daddy, so busy rolling the dollars in they he didn't know the 'kids' were playing up, stalking a Jury and witnesses or he would have done something except it wouldn't be his job because he's busy doing something.

The thing about corporates, Governments, even dictatorships, is that they have a natural life and at some point the boss gets pushed, because it's easier that way, because the boss wasn't doing his job, hadn't kept abreast with Internet law for example, the role of publisher etc (or he/she had extended things to a sound position, and yes it was/is time for someone else to 'take over') and the company or the country need a new direction and fresh ideas and everything is jolly jolly. It's all such fun I might eat an apple.