photo posting legalities

resources or info?

[37Murr]

This being my first post, I'll start out by saying thank you to everyone for so much information so easily organized. This site has really helped guide me in many ways and it's comforting to know it's always here as I continue to learn and figure out what to learn!

I've been working on an idea for a site that would include allowing viewers to post photos and text. Some sites state that they're not responsible for what people post, and list what you can't post of course without being banned. The DMCA mentions some exemptions for ISPs responsibility, but what about a site itself? Does a site that allows posting become a "service" then? A community travel site is the best example I can think of and is similar to what I'm working on. So I've studied the Terms of Use of some but can't quite figure out how to go about setting my site up so I'm covered--my concern isn't just about people posting copyrighted material, but also posting photos that they don't have necessary releases for. I've thought making the site one in which the photos and text have to be submitted for approval, but I worry that would slow growth of the site.

I realize these are questions for a lawyer, but I'm wondering if there are any generally accepted practices when it comes to running a site where a lot of the content is created by the viewers. or if anyone knows of any sites that talk about these kinds of issues. Also, wondering if most sites have a Terms of Use drawn up by a lawyer, or if there are generic Terms of Use contracts that are customized by the site owners.

Finally, I want to say that I haven't even started building this site at all, and have spent a lot of time working out the overall idea of the site and researching similar kind of sites (serveral months)--but I'm excited to get working on it and don't want to proceed without having all the necessary bases covered on the legal end of things (ignorance of that saps my creativity!)

Any advice? Thanks for your time--