Supergrobi
Honorary Member
In my opinion this discussion circles around two different concepts - forums for exchanging ideas and virtual content on one hand and market places for exchanging goods and payments on the other. I fear that as soon as there's a dedicated site on this forum explicitly aiming at connecting people from all over the world for executing financial and tangible transactions, this could easily be perceived as a virtual market place legally, introducing a load of legal-, responsibility-, data protection-, tax- and insurance issues, executed under various countries laws - all apart from the technical effort and the hassle around moderation.
Just as an example: anyone knows how to legally handle the German DSGVO (data protection law), if someone from Australia - according to the sub-forums intention - sends me his banking account via private communication, which is then stored in the database of the forum, living on a hard drive located in New York, run by a Swiss guy - and then asks me to delete it? At least I would have to pay an experienced lawyer to answer this question.
These issues are sorted on market place systems by design - they come with proper payment implementations taking care of legal and tax part on a global level (to take up on the example above: no need to communicate/store banking accounts or other sensitive data on the platform itself), they are proof to all kinds of data protection and business laws (e.g. in Germany one has to offer a button stating something like "buy now at the buyers expense" to execute a legally proof and incontestable deal online), responsibilities are clear from the moment of installation, they take care of all kinds of clean-ups without any further action to be taken by moderators (well, in fact there's no moderators necessary, the staffs requirements looks quite different), no need to "install scripts" on the technical side - they are built with this exact intent in mind. Although those are meant to just sell goods from a single entity, not something like a virtual flea market like ebay, which introduces another load of legal issues to prevent from fraud and trickery, executed by some drive-by scammers.
In my opinion it's two completely different things, maybe like comparing a readers circle to a grocery store.
To anticipate "but other forums":
This is the forum I am talking about, not something other people are running - even falling under quite different jurisdictions. If there's a legal issue under Swiss law and @Bernhard gets sued for whatever reason (his jurisdictions laws differs big time from the US ones and are most likely much more strict when it comes to executing business), he will be left on his own - without the people running other forums and without the users or staff of this forum. He's in charge then, nobody else. Please think about the responsibilities you're asking for to be paid / taken care of by the owner.
No offense, no bad feelings, not even something pro or con this general forums orientation (personally I'd love to scroll through honest and valuable drum-related advertises!), just my 2€ct I would consider first if it was me sitting in the hot seat.
Just as an example: anyone knows how to legally handle the German DSGVO (data protection law), if someone from Australia - according to the sub-forums intention - sends me his banking account via private communication, which is then stored in the database of the forum, living on a hard drive located in New York, run by a Swiss guy - and then asks me to delete it? At least I would have to pay an experienced lawyer to answer this question.
These issues are sorted on market place systems by design - they come with proper payment implementations taking care of legal and tax part on a global level (to take up on the example above: no need to communicate/store banking accounts or other sensitive data on the platform itself), they are proof to all kinds of data protection and business laws (e.g. in Germany one has to offer a button stating something like "buy now at the buyers expense" to execute a legally proof and incontestable deal online), responsibilities are clear from the moment of installation, they take care of all kinds of clean-ups without any further action to be taken by moderators (well, in fact there's no moderators necessary, the staffs requirements looks quite different), no need to "install scripts" on the technical side - they are built with this exact intent in mind. Although those are meant to just sell goods from a single entity, not something like a virtual flea market like ebay, which introduces another load of legal issues to prevent from fraud and trickery, executed by some drive-by scammers.
In my opinion it's two completely different things, maybe like comparing a readers circle to a grocery store.
To anticipate "but other forums":
This is the forum I am talking about, not something other people are running - even falling under quite different jurisdictions. If there's a legal issue under Swiss law and @Bernhard gets sued for whatever reason (his jurisdictions laws differs big time from the US ones and are most likely much more strict when it comes to executing business), he will be left on his own - without the people running other forums and without the users or staff of this forum. He's in charge then, nobody else. Please think about the responsibilities you're asking for to be paid / taken care of by the owner.
No offense, no bad feelings, not even something pro or con this general forums orientation (personally I'd love to scroll through honest and valuable drum-related advertises!), just my 2€ct I would consider first if it was me sitting in the hot seat.