Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

User-Created Content: Encyclopedias,

Complaint Boards, and Forums

Many sites are based on so-called user-created content. These sites

allow Internet users to share their thoughts with the world. They

range from mass-edited encyclopedias, to group blogs, to sites that

collect complaints about businesses, to thinly veiled attack sites,

to forums that work like massive party lines and allow open dis -

cussion of many topics. They often appear high in the rankings

of search engines because they contain vast amounts of original

content.

These sites can be particularly dangerous because the owners of

these sites generally believe that they are under no legal obligation to

remove harmful content. Site owners in the United States have suc-

cessfully used Section ...