Since being in a “public beta” for a month now, we’ve been covered and reviewed on a number of different places. We pay close attention to how we’re received and what people like or dislike. The main concern that people have is on the ownership of the content that comes from the discussion. If you use Disqus, does Disqus own and control your comments?

The answer, of course, is No. One of the great things about using Disqus is that ownership is given back to the content creator. If you’ve left comments somewhere, it can be a great contribution that you’d like attributed to you forever. And it’s not chained down or lost to these separate blog islands.

What does this mean for you as a blogger or site-owner? You don’t lose any ownership or functionality that you’ve had before. Comments (content) left on your website, using Disqus, also belong to you. You can remove, filter, or save the comments as you wish. The comments, as they appear on your website, belong to you. The difference is that the content creator, the commenter, still has a copy of his comments if the blog ever disappears.

We have some work to do, software-wise, to make sure this works as seamless as we wish it to be. Disqus is meant to evolve and open up how discussions happen across the web, not create another closed system.

—

I thought to write about this because of something that arrived in my inbox this morning, with subject “Legal Actions”. It is as follows:

It has come to my attention that someone is trying to slander me using your website. Someone has created a profile with my name writing terrible things about me.

[link redacted]

I need you to remove this from your pages or I will take legal actions against your firm. I am the only person in the world named [redacted]. This is obviously someone that wants to hurt me. Please remove the site within seven days to avoid legal actions.

Someone had posted an anonymous comment under his name. The comment was a bit negative, but still relatively harmless. Disqus was built to address such trolling, but it was up to the site-owner to choose to accept all anonymous posts. We did not remove the comment. It was not ours to remove.

I pointed out our policy as well as Title 47, Section 230 of the U.S. Code which protects us from such liability. Unfortunately, he was not satisfied and sent back a response:

I am the President of a big European company. I will put unlimited funds in trying to get this profile down. You can chose to work with me or face the consequences in a court of Law both in Europe and in the US.

Finally, I urge you to study the way MySpace and Youtube handle these kinds of problems.

If I have not heard from you Wednesday 2007-12-12 I will proceed with the legal actions

This was not an issue of copyright infringement, as he undoubtedly tried to cite as precedence. It was a matter of “libel” using our service. Again, I made it clear that, aside from this having no legal leg to stand on, we will not comply because we value our user’s (the site-owner in this case) right to his own content. He still wasn’t too happy:

I am very sorry that you have declined my request to remove the slander statements about me on your website. I strongly urge you to study the slander and defamation laws in both U.K, Sweden and United States. You might also want to talk to your lawyers about a libel cases especially in the US.

Legal Actions will be taken against you and your company both in Europe and The United States on Wednesday. We will ask for a jury trial.

Oh well, too bad. Obviously, we’re not too concerned, but I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify:

Disqus makes no claim on your comment content and we take great care to make sure we don’t overstep any bounds. Leave any hesitations behind and experience Disqus for yourself.