Crime Liability

(This may or may not be more of a USA oriented question:)

What if you're hosting a forum on your website and you aren't doing anything wrong or promoting anything bad. Now lets say that somebody posts a message stating that they are doing or are going to do something illegal. Theft, drugs, serving alcolhol to minors, or anything else. Are you now at risk of being sued for knowing about this and not doing anything about it? Could the police charge you with something? What if you deleted the post once you read it, would that matter? How about if you are not even the owner of the website but you are just a forum member and the servers prove that you read those messages?

It sounds ridiculous but in this day and age you never know. Read this article:

Quote:
ISPs Can Be Sued for Libelous Content

In a surprising development, a California appeals court has ruled that ISPs can be sued for libel posted by a user.

A state appellate court in San Francisco has sent shock waves through cyberspace by ruling that in some instances, Internet service providers like America Online and Yahoo can be held legally responsible for an online smear by someone using their service. . . .

Until last month, courts nationwide had agreed that the only one who could be sued for trashing someone's reputation online was the person who posted the message, usually an elusive figure and an unlikely candidate for a fruitful damage suit.

But on Oct. 15, the appellate court panel in a 3-0 ruling said that if an ISP knew, or had reason to know, that the message was libelous, and failed to halt its publication, it should be held responsible for its contents, just like a bookstore or library that continues distributing a book after a libel notice. . . .

The federal statute at issue here is Section 230(c)(1) of Title 47, the Cox-Wyden amendment to the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which says, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Every federal court to consider this statute has held that this provision immunizes ISPs from suit based on the content of messages posted through them. Nevertheless:

Although the federal law refused to equate an ISP or other intermediary with the originator of a libelous message, the appellate court said, the law did not rule out their liability, under traditional legal principles, for distributing harmful material after notice that it was libelous.

That's a plausible interpetation, I suppose; the key issue on appeal (whether in state court or, if the case goes far enough, in the Supreme Court) will be whether Congress intended to preclude such common law remedies with a broad federal grant of immunity.

I know that story was about ISP's and libel, but the principal of being held responsible for your knowledge of things is exactly the same. Anybody know anything about this sort of stuff or have any additional links?