At Beyond the Hype, I went to a presentation by Elliott Bledsoe, a lawyer who works in the Creative Industries faculty at QUT, principally involved with Creative Commons. He presented about this report: Legal Aspects of Web 2.0 Activities: Management of Legal Risk Associated with Use of YouTube, MySpace and Second Life.
Basically, if we can control whether an item is on a site or not (eg comments), we are responsible for it, thus the publisher, thus liable if there are legal implications - eg. defamation.
