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tl;dw: They accusers eventually backed down.

This is relevant to any webmaster who maintains a web2.0 website (so basically every webmaster today). Interestingly enough I still can't find any legal terms or even copyright on skeptical-science.com which is kind of disappointing because I wanted to see how well those disclaimers of the type "All comments, links and content is user generated and owned by the poster. No legal responsibility..." hold up in court.

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Somewhat related for US companies: it's probably a good idea to file a DMCA safe harbor form if your site has user-generated content[1].

1. http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

Those disclaimers shouldn't be necessary under US law provided we're talking third-party, user-generated content. See discussion of CDA Section 230 in an earlier comment. As a social media lawyer I thank God every day that that section (and DMCA Section 512) exist, because with out them, social media wouldn't exist as we know it in America. Every site of any scale would be sued into bankruptcy within weeks.

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