8:58am Thursday 1st July 2010
UPDATE: Brighton and Hove Albion fans' forum North Stand Chat was closed overnight and this morning after a threat of legal action.
The forum was taken down last night until about 12.30pm today.
When it reopened, forum manager Darren said that he received legal threats about once a week, but that this one was serious enough to merit taking down the boards.
A message on the site said: "NSC is temporarily closed in order to ensure people read, and take notice of, the following: "Today I received a threat of legal action relating to potentially libellous postings on NSC.
"Please be aware that NSC is not here to allow people to make libellous postings about individuals and oganisations. If you have a grievance with someone, please use another avenue to air it."
The message warned individual posters could be traced whether they logged on anonymously or not.
Site administrator Darren, or Bozza, said: "I'm simply not prepared to assume legal and/or financial risk for the reckless actions of others."
Shortly before 12.30pm, the forum was back up and running.
In a thread, Darren said: "The posts were not recent, and would have been buried many pages below the front page of The Big Board. However, search engines being what they are, the posts could easily be found and accessed directly."
He added: "On average I probably receive some form of legal threat about once a week. Most are ill-founded and without substance - no posts are deleted, no users banned and NSC remains available to all.
"I don't take the decision to take NSC down lightly, but the issue that was brought to my attention yesterday was more serious and, I think, merited the action I took."
Last year the site was closed temporarily after police raised concerns about racist remarks.
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