I have a member at my forum that recently decided to post a hate filled "joke" with some off-color comments and words that had absolutely no place at my forum. I removed the thread and notified him that he needs to post only clean jokes and nothing with words that can be hurtful or derogatory to other members. Since then I've been told in no uncertain terms that I am part of the problems in America and that I had no right to remove the thread. He even sent me a message telling me "By not allowing me to post this issue, you have actually violated my civil rights...namely freedom of speech."

Now I know he's full of crap and he has already been banned because he refused to guarantee that he would follow the forum guidelines by not posting derogatory comments in the future. My question is, I will be sending him one final e-mail telling him he is wrong about the whole freedom of speech slant. I thought a thread was posted about this before but I can't seem to find it. Anyone have any ideas on how abruptly I can get this point across to this person?

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Mark Blair
NowParenting - "Parenting Discussion Community"
HostHideout - "Where Professionals Discuss Web Hosting"

Bill of Rights:
As far as I'm concerned, you're not Congress.

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Oh this one is Good!!

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Where's Waldo?, Book Club, Scavenger Hunt, Role Playing, Travel Guide, Photos, Videos and more.
TalkWhatever.com - Blogs, Social Groups and Forum

I told the last person who threatened to sue me over stupid crap to send me the court papers and I'd piss on them and send them right back.

I never got the papers

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Ford Mustang Forums - F-Series Trucks

What a let down

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Immortality will come to such as are fit for it

As I understand it, freedom of speech was intended to protect the owner of the printing press. Your site is your "press" and you get to determine what gets printed there. If someone wants to engage in hate speech they can go get their own site and spew it there.

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disabledNYC | The Chic Petite | Ice Cream Forum

Yeah, he has absolutely no ground to stand on there Mark

Your forums, your rules...It's just like private property. Somebody can't come storming onto your front yard saying whatever they want, but as long as they're on public property or their own property, they can do that

That said...there are still exceptions with freedom of speech. You can't go around telling racist jokes and spouting off hateful remarks even if you are on public property...People are not free to say whatever they want, and a lot of people don't understand that, they just think that "free speech" means anything and everything under the sky, but that's just not the case, but I digress. That's out of context here

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...some super-sweet signature

I have rules. And there are the common sense rules. You don't post "dirty" stuff on a forum with general audience, you don't do bad things just to prove you have freedom of speech. If you cannot follow my rules you are out. I don't waste time on such things. Was also threatened with lawsuits or beating (imagine a 100 kg male member threatening a woman admin who's not more than 50 kilos of person with a beating. And yeah, he's a well known MA instructor, I think his students must be proud).

Just don't worry .. ask for the papers to "mark your territory" too .. as advised by BamaStangGuy

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Just make sure you have it in your TOS that posts can be removed at Admin/Mods discretion.

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India Travel Forum | Why most forums fail within 1 year! | Free Travel Directory

Just ban him

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