Time for a Reminder

Once again, we need to remind people what an OPEN PUBLIC board is. A number of years back, an Area 4 Sergeant ran a board called SCCN (SecondCityCopNetwork we think). It was a novelty where cops could post about the FOP leadership (Nolan), policy, bosses, etc. He didn't conceal his identity and ran the board openly. His contact e-mail was his own and we assume he paid for the site himself.

It all came to a crashing halt one day when the head of the Disabled Chicago Police Officers Association sued the sergeant for comments made on the site. We alluded to this event in our very first post. Of course, it was an open unregulated board, and the fact that there were no registered users protected him from liability, but the damage was done and the site shut down shortly thereafter. We still have a copy of the lawsuit in our files (as we said, we are pack rats and get a hold of everything!)

Nowadays, anyone can run a free website on any variety of subjects. The Internet has truly become the great equalizer of our times. Unfortunately, the tiny brains don't seem to have evolved in the ensuing time span. We still get the occasional knuckle dragger posting racist, misogynist crap and some borderline slander. Internet Law is very vague at this point in time. We feel comfortable with everything we've posted on the blog. The trouble comes in the comments. Certain case precedent says that if you have open and unregulated commentary, the site moderator isn't liable for what is said. Other precedent says if you regulate comments, you are the de facto editor and therefore responsible for content, though there are contradictions to this too.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. We are garnering a bit of attention lately. Media figures are contacting us; Watch Commanders mention us at roll calls; Instructors reference postings in class; we even heard that IAD was directed to conduct an investigation of IP addresses to ensure that posting was not being done on city time on city computers (but they didn't care about study groups being done on city time though - hmm). Watch the language boys and girls. We can't prove everyone here is CPD. But we can't prove that everyone here isn't either. Last month we got 1,800 visitors on a single day from 3 dozen countries. We directed our publicity material to cops; we sent faxes to police stations; most of our visitors are blue. But if you don't want your comments appearing under Fran Speilman's by-line and the mayor saying how shocked he is while he ducks another "Hired Truck" question, knock off the crap. We don't need the heat. Otherwise, at some point, it becomes too much and another good idea ends up where SCCN is now.