As for liability, having limited liability is not written in stone.

If you get sued for hundreds of thousands of pounds the winning party could then argue that it was not lawful to create that kind of liability as a small business to shield yourself from the legal consequences of your reckless speech actions and therefore you should be held personally liable. — boethius

I think his point was, based on his understanding, which I assume to be accurate, OSA compliance basically protects a person from all of that, assuming they abide by its guidelines, which require ability to moderate and delete offending content. It's not rational to attribute a site owner as somehow being able to know what unknown random persons they didn't raise who happened to sign up and begin using their publicly-available site say (freedom of religion is freedom of belief, which is tied to ability to speak such belief in the form of speech, otherwise that's a proxy violation of freedom of religion) before they say it, only that if it is deemed offensive or problematic that it may be removed in a timely and permanent manner.

As it stands now, Jamal is a UK citizen open to anyone who is also a UK citizen to take him to court, if they have the wherewithal, of course. If I, as a nobody, notice offensive or extreme content, I would simply contact the hosting provider. And yes, it does vary on jurisdiction, precisely as you say. Though what is interesting is this is "hosted" software (as will the new forum be, presumably) meaning it depends on not only where those servers are located but how experienced (or inclined toward the particular site owner or free speech in general) the forum company that provides the software and hosting, which per basically all forum software licensing agreements it can terminate the forum "owner's" license or ability to use it at an any time for any reason, mind you. This is the key difference between the current and future dynamic versus if Jamal would have coded a forum software himself from the ground up

As an aside: What would stop me from filing a request, right now as things are, to either the forum company or if this were actually privately-hosted, the hosting company and essentially accomplishing the same thing (getting the site shut down or forced to remove offending content or otherwise fundamentally changing how it operates?

That said, you seem to know your stuff. Such wisdom is best heeded, perhaps? :smile:

And then there's the actual legitimate lawsuits that you can face from your actual customers.

As soon as you're a business, anyone paying your business is now a client and getting a service.

If you ban them for reasons they don't feel are legitimate they can bring consumer protection complaints also sue you in UK court for financial and emotional damages.

As "normal citizens" they need not ought to know anything, can represent themselves, get coaching and leeway from the judge to seek the justice they are due, which is at minimum a judge hearing their case and making you account for your actions.

There's also legal arguments that exist you likely cannot even imagine exist and are even more surprised judges take them seriously.

For example, right here today you've just explained your primary purpose in making a business is to just continue on as you were before, not grow in anyway, just just pocket the benefits of limited liability protection. Well, someone who's already bankrupted you in court (years from now) can then take this conversation and use your words as evidence your business was bad faith, you never intended to build a real business but just wanted to personally protect yourself from your unlawful speech machinations you call philosophy, you've done nothing different than what you did before as a personal hobby, and therefore the courts should not extend to you the privileges awarded to real serious business people trying to grow the economy with blood, sweat, and tears: that you cannot under the law make a business solely for the purposes of hiding from liability, which it is written in the book of "A new home for TPF" is Jamal's primary consideration in this affair.

I think his point was, based on his understanding, which I assume to be accurate, OSA compliance basically protects a person from all of that, assuming they abide by its guidelines, which include ability to moderate and delete offending content. — Outlander

What should happen and what does happen are two different things.

I'm not disputing that Jamal can run the forum lawfully.

I'm pointing out that is up for interpretation that only a judge gets to decide, and just going through the process can be immensely expensive.

There's also essentially endless areas of the law to consider, so even if one area was indeed "super locked down" a lawsuit could arise in another area.

To put it another way, someone who hires a lawyer in the UK to find some pretext to sue Jamal's business will almost certainly make good on that contract.

As it stands now, Jamal is a UK citizen open to anyone who is also a UK citizen to take him to court, if they have the wherewithal, of course. — Outlander

If he lived in the UK that would be slightly better as you can at least show up in court and defend yourself.

And yes, it does vary on jurisdiction, precisely as you say. Though what is interesting is this is "hosted" software (as will the new forum be, presumably) meaning it depends on not only where those servers are located but how experienced (or inclined toward the particular site owner or free speech in general) the forum company that provides the software and hosting, which it can terminate the forum "owner's" license or ability to use it at anytime, mind you. What would stop me from filing a request, right now as things are, to either the forum company or if this were actually privately-hosted, the hosting company and essentially accomplishing the same thing (getting the site shut down or forced to remove offending content or otherwise fundamentally changing how it operates? — Outlander

Yes, even more exposure to legal harassment.

And my main issue is the motivation of people who take issue with Jamal and the damage they can do with zero merits at all. Endless ways to legally harass a business, so the more important question is if that motivation would arise.

On top of that, no one is perfect so then there's also all the cases that can arise where the plaintiff actually has merit and the damage that would do (even if every member of philosophy forum thinks the law in question has no merit, that won't matter to a judge).

That said, you seem to know your stuff. Such wisdom is best heeded, perhaps? :smile: — Outlander

Thank you for the appreciation. For some reason experience in business is rarely valued by people wanting to start a business. I'm not really sure why, but I think movies have oversimplified things for people.

But basic recommendation would be to try to take advantage of a lawyer actually being part of our community. That would be simplest and surest way. Even as an experienced business person I'd thank my lucky stars if @Benkei agreed to legally administer my micro forum business. I have zero idea if he would, but that would solve all the above issues: predators look for weak targets and a lawyer is not a weak target so that in itself would solve 99% of potential problems, in addition to @Benkei actually knowing what the law actually says and how a judge is likely to interpret it.

But whatever the decision it cannot be changed easily, so should be really well thought out.

Serious consideration should be also given to making a simple non-profit.

There are several advantages for this situation:

A non-profit has more sympathy with the courts as a judges generally view non-profits as naive do-gooders with a social mission (if it makes some sense what the non-profit is about) who shouldn't be legally harassed. So that would also solve a lot of the legal problems.

The assets of a non-profit can't be so easily preyed upon by bad actors, so the brand, database, network etc. would be far more secure from legal predation, even if someone did start to legally harass the non-profit.

A non-profit does not have a client relationship with people donating, so gets rid of all those legal problems of payment-for-service.

Whereas I think most of the forum members would agree we don't want commercial advertising here, a non-profit could get grants from other non-profits and foundations who like the cause of dialogue between different ideologies (or then want to be seen supporting the idea), and since it's not advertisement those logos need not be prominent but can be somewhere.

Grants could even be raised to expand operations, such as in person conferences and live debates, maybe even a podcast. Pretty much anything new would be easier to raise donation or grant money than try to make commercially successful.

And these advantages could be easily combined with the advantages of @Benkei helping to legally administer the structure, if he was so inclined.

How I would recommend structuring things is that there's a core group of administrators and the basic fees can be covered by that core group (such as the 100 per month discussed above and other miscellaneous expenses); of course can also be covered by donations but if the administrators can cover the fees if needs be that is a stable foundation (in exchange they have far more influence than anyone else). In addition to that, then we have part of the forum dedicated to members of the community working on grant applications and raising donations to do more things (obviously in a legal way); so if the money is raised, great, if not then those additional things don't happen and therefore no financial problem happens due to nothing happening.

A UK limited company is very simple. In contrast, a non-profit or charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) or similar would mean a lot of bureaucracy, at least in the UK. And I don't know about where you are but as a non-profit we would likely have more legal exposure.

A big headache, and would achieve nothing, so no, we're not going down that route.

My main argument is against the UK jurisdiction, mainly due to all the speech laws that have been created, or suddenly enforced in new ways.

I'm not doubting that the basic administration of a small business is an issue. For example if you were talking about making a new business structure to do contracting work none of this would be relevant.

However, speech people don't like regularly turns into lawsuits, so I do not see how you'd be somehow immune.

There's three categories of problems:

1. An individual makes it their mission to make as many problems for you as possible. For example someone you have or will ban. You need to map out what they would be capable of doing legally, both through consumer and data protection mechanisms as well as lawsuits. What can they force you to deal with. What grounds they could have to have their suite heard and what merits they could have to actually win.

2. Legal predation to take philosophy forum assets and perhaps even your assets. If someone wanted to create a pretext to sue you to then take control of your business, could that be done and how easily? Keep in mind, even if it's clear that's what they are doing, saying so publicly would just result in another defamation suite.

3. Harassment by the government. Maybe someone posts on the forum something about some minister that minister finds out about (as they obsessively police their online mentions) and then uses their government power to go after your business and you yourself: audits, hate speech, money laundering, whatever.

You need to either be confident none of these things would ever happen or then be confident in a strategy and resources available to deal with each one.

Then there's practical issues, starting with not living in the UK. Even if you had representation, a representative can't testify on your behalf so if there's some issue that goes to court, no matter how silly, you'd need to fly back to the UK to be in court for the hearing to explain that the plaintiffs version of events didn't happen and makes no sense. The plaintiff may know you don't live in the UK and so insist on hearings as much as possible to force you to travel and spend money and have your life disrupted.

If you lived in the UK then you could analyze all the issues and then have the plan to just go defend yourself in court whenever you need to, trust to the court's good judgement. However, if the plaintiff can force you to spend money then they can just keep doing that until you're broke.

Freedom of speech does pretty much exist in America, land of the free.

3. Harassment by the government. Maybe someone posts on the forum something about some minister that minister finds out about (as they obsessively police their online mentions) and then uses their government power to go after your business and you yourself: audits, hate speech, money laundering, whatever. — boethius

Wouldn't that be like, a huge deal, turning @Jamal into a celebrity overnight and elevating this quiet little corner of the Internet into something anyone here wouldn't ever imagine in their wildest dreams? He would be the ultimate "every man" martyr everybody and their grandma would get behind—point being, it would make the elected official look bad which is not in any elected official's MO. No?

However, if the plaintiff can force you to spend money then they can just keep doing that until you're broke. — boethius

Aren't there equal safeguards against this blatant and codified form of abuse of the legal system? Frivolous lawsuits, "lawfare", etc?

Freedom of speech does pretty much exist in America, land of the free. — boethius

I mean it's probably safer in the US, but not worth the hassle for that added safety. It strikes me as overkill to make us bulletproof. It feels like you might be catastrophizing and overburdening.

In other words, if we do our best to be above board, we'll be fine in the UK.

Wouldn't that be like, a huge deal, turning Jamal into a celebrity overnight and elevating this quiet little corner of the Internet into something anyone here wouldn't ever imagine in their wildest dreams? — Outlander

That would be my plan, but I'd only be confident of that if the business is based in the US as freedom of speech is such a big deal for Americans, plenty of organizations and celebrities dedicated to the cause.

However, UK judges could just put a gag order on @Jamal .. and then he'd never be famous :confused:

Aren't there equal safeguards against this blatant and codified form of abuse of the legal system? Frivolous lawsuits, "lawfare", etc? — Outlander

The problem is proving that is what's happening, then making a law suite about that, then all the suites playing out in court.

But basically, someone who passionately hates @Jamal and takes some issue with something he's done, clearly genuinely believes in their cause as proven by their fanatical endless passionate hatred.

Someone who is really a well resourced predator would have the sophistication and accomplices to carry out such a crime without creating any evidence that is what is happening. They will come to court as simply country folk with good cause and better reputations.

Such an actor could make a company to make a company to make a company to, all in different countries, just to sue @Jamal.

A UK limited company is very simple. In contrast, a non-profit or charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) or similar would mean a lot of bureaucracy, at least in the UK. — Jamal

As it has to be. You clearly stated that you want to set up the new version of TPF according to a legal framework. This limited company will be run in the UK, according to British law. I don't see any problem with this. Wondering whether someone would sue me or not for "consumer, financial or legitimate damages" is a bit twisted.

I think some folks are obsessed with the stateless oasis they wish to live in...You do very well to start the company in British territory since you are a UK citizen. It is logical and understandable. It gives me confidence. Setting it up in a tax haven like the Netherlands or Belice would be odder, I think.

My main argument is against the UK jurisdiction, mainly due to all the speech laws that have been created, or suddenly enforced in new ways. — boethius

The Online Safety Act is precisely the legislation I am setting up the new site to comply with. By the time we launch we'll have compliance nailed down in place: risk assessment, policies, reporting tools, moderation processes, documentation thereof. UK jurisdiction isn't a liability but rather the legal context we're deliberately addressing.

With all this talk of "speech laws," it might be an idea to put things in perspective. The OSA targets:

• Terrorism content: material that encourages, glorifies, or provides instruction for terrorism, or originates from a proscribed terrorist organisation
• Child sexual exploitation & abuse
• Content that depicts or promotes child sexual abuse
• Incitement to violence or hatred
• Criminal threats, harassment, or stalking
• Revenge porn / intimate image abuse
• Fraud, scams, or facilitation of financial crime

Even though we are low-risk with respect to these things, we are going to have a system that can deal with them and that can be seen to be serious about them.

Is all this about risks to freedom of speech in the UK? I'm no expert in those legal things based on nations, but wouldn't Ireland be better since almost all companies operating in Europe seem to have their office there for billing and legal. Seems like the most free place in that regard.

Well, Sweden or any nordic nation would be even better I guess, I don't think there's any real legal issues here except if someone threatens to kill or do such harm or something. So for legal reasons that would probably be the safest. I guess even France holds freedom of speech in high regard. But I guess that would only create a lot of hassle and problems with the business side of things having it somewhere else.

Regardless, as you listed above, those things are pretty basic things to ban, so I don't think UK would be a problem.

Wouldn't that be like, a huge deal, turning Jamal into a celebrity overnight and elevating this quiet little corner of the Internet into something anyone here wouldn't ever imagine in their wildest dreams? He would be the ultimate "every man" martyr everybody and their grandma would get behind—point being, it would make the elected official look bad which is not in any elected official's MO. No? — Outlander

Jamal becomes a champion for a true place of discussion, showing the world that there are places of discourse that doesn't turn to polarized cesspools in an instant. Fighting the power of governments for the freedom of philosophical discussions... could be a future film based on the history of the forum. I got dibs to the film rights :fire:

:up:

Terrorism content: material that encourages, glorifies, or provides instruction for terrorism, or originates from a proscribed terrorist organisation — Jamal

This is the one I'd be worried about.

But the basic gist of what I'm trying to say is that "following the rules" is not anyways a way to avoid court and the expenses of even going to court.

Someone can just say you're breaking the law, take things out of context, even fabricate evidence that never happened or make wild claims about what did happen. Who's to say you're in the right and did nothing wrong?

A lengthy and expensive court process.

Such an actor could make a company to make a company to make a company to, all in different countries, just to sue Jamal. — boethius

Remind me again why you think it's better if I get sued personally rather than The Philosophy Forum Ltd.

Someone who is really a well resourced predator would have the sophistication and accomplices to carry out such a crime without creating any evidence that is what is happening. They will come to court as simply country folk with good cause and better reputations.

Such an actor could make a company to make a company to make a company to, all in different countries, just to sue Jamal. — boethius

I mean, I'd probably consider agreeing with @Hanover at this point.

The scenario you're describing is like something out of an international spy movie—almost. :smirk:

No one person could ever really be as "invulnerable" to the level of hypothetical you describe, I'd wager. (A wealthy and well-oiled quasi-criminal organization, let alone an entire government who makes it their waking purpose to come after one man, it'd be much easier just to buy him out, I'd figure)

The question I had initially the moment I first read the topic of a new forum was: "Why?" Naturally he answers "why" in the post, one of the primary reasons being legal safety/resilience followed by reliance on a larger, more successful forum software company (Plush doesn't update or really "do" anything these days and hasn't for quite some time). I don't know much about OSA compliance or UK data/Internet laws in general (other than they're pretty strict and to some people unfair/possibly Constitutionally unsound), but, do you think his main reasons in the first post of this thread are not as pertinent or vital to a continued and secure operation of TPF as he attributes them to be? :chin:

But the basic gist of what I'm trying to say is that "following the rules" is not anyways a way to avoid court and the expenses of even going to court.

Someone can just say you're breaking the law, take things out of context, even fabricate evidence that never happened or make wild claims about what did happen. Who's to say you're in the right and did nothing wrong?

A lengthy and expensive court process. — boethius

Rather than an argument against forming a UK company, this seems to be an argument against existing at all.

I mean it's probably safer in the US, but not worth the hassle for that added safety. It strikes me as overkill to make us bulletproof. It feels like you might be catastrophizing and overburdening.

In other words, if we do our best to be above board, we'll be fine in the UK. — Hanover

:up:

Remind me again why you think it's better if I get sued personally rather than The Philosophy Forum Ltd. — Jamal

To sue someone personally you need to go to the district where they live, so the issue of physically getting to court is at least solved.

Once in court you are just a private citizen going about your personal hobby, you're not a business and have none of the responsibilities that go along with that.

A judge will tend to be extremely non-sympathetic to some random foreigner coming and suing a private person in their district and will want to be viewed as protecting citizens that actually live there against vindictive or predatory schemes of outsiders.

There's no expectation that you'd need a lawyer, as you're not a business, or know very well the law, the judge will take that into consideration that you are just a private individual with limited means.

If the judge did rule against you, the damages would also take into account that you are a private individual with limited means and so could be trivial what you're ordered to pay.

The plaintiff's we need to worry about (some random person in the world) would super unlikely live anywhere close to you, so the problem of travel would be reversed and they would need to come and physically be in court to make their case.

All this is a huge disincentive and goes a long way in explaining why no one's ever sued you for banning them.

As soon as you're doing business you get none of these advantages.

If one business had to pay X for some similar thing, then you too should pay X.

There's a list of rules, even if you are following them to the letter, someone can make up a case that you haven't been following them.

All the rules mean is you can be brought to court to account for your rule following.

Rather than an argument against forming a UK company, this seems to be an argument against existing at all. — Jamal

No, if there's a jurisdiction where judges are likely to simply not hear speech based cases, then that is a huge mitigating factor.

For the expenses of court processes to start accruing, a case needs to be heard by a judge. So if there's a law that you can't say X, Y, and Z then a judge will hear a case by anyone claiming you said that. The case can't be dismissed as the issue is factual and not whether the claim is legal or not to begin with. It could take years to actually prove you never said X, Y and/or Z.

So, if you're (i.e. incorporated structure of whatever kind) in a jurisdiction where you can essentially say anything you want then judges won't hear those cases as the facts don't matter, the plaintiff is not claiming you've acted unlawfully as you can say what you want and therefore there is no factual dispute needing to be resolved by a court process.

In other words, if we do our best to be above board, we'll be fine in the UK. — Hanover

:up: :up:
.

Rather than an argument against forming a UK company, this seems to be an argument against existing at all. — Jamal

:up: :up:

Again, I have no idea what is going on in your legal system but in UK law, pretty much everything you say in that post is false, and perhaps based on some very peculiar circumstances that you know about from your own life.

In particular I want to shut down this particular untruth:

To sue someone personally you need to go to the district where they live, so the issue of physically getting to court is at least solved. — boethius

This is simply not true in UK law.

This is simply not true in UK law. — Jamal

You're saying you could live in Norther Scotland and be forced to appear in a London court by a plaintiff, without the case having any connection to London (except maybe the plaintiff lives there)?

That would indeed be a really unusual legal system.

The usual legal system is that the vast majority of regular people can only be sued in the district where they live.

Exceptions would be things like you have a house in another district and someone is suing about that house (and some reason the district should hear the case concerning that house and that it should belong to you, for example), but most regular people don't have a house elsewhere than where they live ... or any house.

Again, I have no idea what is going on in your legal system but in UK law, pretty much everything you say in that post is false, and perhaps based on some very peculiar circumstances that you know about from your own life. — Jamal

My own life dealing with both business and court processes.

Your idea that if you just implement the rules reasonably well then you're good is totally false.

People have a right to claim you haven't followed the rules and have a right to make that case and bring that case to court to seek restitution and remedy.

That you think you haven't done and won't do anything wrong does not prevent the above from happening anyways, in any jurisdiction.

The main question is motivation. If no one's ever motivated enough to bring you to court then that obviously won't happen. Your experience with contracting is in that category as businesses don't have time and money to bring contractors to court and engage in years of litigation to recover tiny losses (and I imagine you are good at your job anyways so there's only minor disputes if any).

However, if someone is motivated enough they will find a way to bring you to court.

So that's the essence of my questions:

You have more experience with all the people you've banned than I do, are you confident none of them would bring you to court when they suddenly have consumer rights vis-a-vis The Philosophy Forum Ldt. that would allow them to do so?

Are you confident no one participating or reading the forum would ever interpret anything on the forum as something from the naughty list of no-no's, and be motivated to have their day in court about that?

Are you confident the UK government will never take particular interest in what's said here on their own account for whatever reason?

In a jurisdiction with strong freedom of speech laws (the US being only one of them), none of that analysis is needed as people can't anyways bring you to court over political and artistic speech.

As for legal predation, speech is only one avenue, but could be literally anything, some area of the law you've never even heard about.

You're saying you could live in Norther Scotland and be forced to appear in a London court by a plaintiff without the case having any connection to London (except maybe the plaintiff lives there)? — boethius

The plaintiff's location is the connection. It's about where the harm has occurred. The upshot is if the alleged harm happened in London, a plaintiff will/can sue in London, even if the defendant lives in Scotland. Apparently that's normal procedure for online publication and is not considered unusual.

You have more experience with all the people you've banned than I do, are you confident none of them would bring you to court when they suddenly have consumer rights vis-a-vis The Philosophy Forum Ldt.? — boethius

Why do you think consumer rights magically appear just because a company exists? They don't. Anyone who could hypothetically sue The Philosophy Forum Ltd could already do the same against me personally today. The company just limits my personal exposure if someone ever did try something.

Are you confident no one participating or reading the forum would ever interpret anything on the forum as something from the naughty list of no-no's, and be motivated to have their day in court about that? — boethius

The actual legal risk is the same whether I operate TPF as a company or as a sole trader, and we're addressing it through clear policies, risk assessment, etc. etc. etc, as described above.

Are you confident the UK government will never take particular interest in what's said here on their own account for whatever reason? — boethius

Same answer really. The government doesn't care if I'm just me or a company. Anyway, TPF is a super-low-risk service from the OSA's point of view.

What I'm providing is a framework to analyze liability and business decisions.

You should assume at all times there is a pathway to wild success and a pathway to total destruction. Your actions as well as outside events you have no control of will determine which pathway occurs.

Ultimately, a reasonable business decision is one where the pathway to wild success is more probable than complete destruction (but they are always both within the realm of possibility).

Liability analysis starts with the worst case scenarios.

Either there's some reason those worst case scenarios won't happen: no one's ever been too upset with being banned or what's said, politicians have never taken issue with what random people say about them online, and so on, or then there's a probability estimate that is low enough that the benefits outweigh the risk.

Once the risks are identified you then want to further optimize the strategy and decisions.

Optimization means sensitivity analysis.

The biggest risks in what you want to do are legal hazards due to unlawful speech risks. The most sensitive factor in determining those risks is jurisdiction. The more you're in a jurisdiction where pretty much any speech is not unlawful, then the lower those litigation and other consumer protection mechanisms risk become.

Then for-profit or non-profit would be the next most sensitive factor.

My recommendation would be to aim to make a structure that is financially sustainable and can handle all the kinds of events that are likely to happen, including normal life events like you get sick or have something else you need to do for a while.

Whatever the most suited jurisdiction, perhaps it is as you say and a non-profit is more complicated, but perhaps it can also more easily bring in the resources to thrive.

What I'm providing is a framework to analyze liability and business decisions. — boethius

Thank you for your efforts and for your interesting contributions, but I remain confident in the path I have mapped out.

My recommendation would be to aim to make a structure that is financially sustainable and can handle all the kinds of events that are likely to happen — boethius

:up:

The plaintiff's location is the connection. It's about where the harm has occurred. — Jamal

Again, most regular people don't go cause harm far from where they live.

So a private individual who says something online in Northern Scotland, that someone in London takes issue with, will need to appear in London court?

The offence has occurred in Northern Scotland or in London?

For, we're talking about online speech.

Why do you think consumer rights magically appear just because a company exists? They don't. Anyone who could hypothetically sue The Philosophy Forum Ltd could already do the same against me personally today. The company just limits my personal exposure if someone ever did try something. — Jamal

Right now philosophy forum is your private property that you don't provide a service through. So it's like inviting us to your private house: you can invite us to come in and you can tell us to go.

Once you're a company, you are by definition providing a service. You can't go to court and say you are a company but you provide no product or service ... yet you do things anyways (i.e. you have activity that creates liability, unlike a shelf or zombie company).

Providing service creates consumer protections.

What you're saying is basically akin to you throw parties every weekend and people just come and party and it's always been easy and you've never had to worry about the law, and therefore if you made a company to organize parties it would be the same level of laissez faire nonchallantness and general unconcern for the law.

The situations of private party and company party service are very different, just more easy to visualize what kind of business liability is created in throwing wildass spanking crazy parties like we all know you do.

You can easily visualize someone choking, starting a fire, having a heart-attack, getting sick from the buffet (or something else entirely!) and then blaming you for it as the party business operator. You can't as easily visualize people taking issue with political and artistic speech because you obviously don't have a problem with political and artistic speech, but you need to really put yourself in the viewpoint of someone who does and what legal mechanism you maybe in the process of creating for them to express their frustrations.

Right now philosophy forum is your private property that you don't provide a service through. So it's like inviting us to your private house: you can invite us to come in and you can tell us to go.

Once you're a company, you are by definition providing a service. — boethius

No, legally I'm already providing a service. Users already have the same rights they'll have when a company operates it. OSA, GDPR, and probably other laws apply because it's open to the public.

Again, most regular people don't go cause harm far from where they live.

So a private individual who says something online in Northern Scotland, that someone in London takes issue with, will need to appear in London court?

The offence has occurred in Northern Scotland or in London? — boethius

As I said, the offence happens where the harm is suffered. So yes, the case can be brought in London because that's where the harm occurred, but in reality the defendant would usually appear remotely by video.