A Serious Legal Issue Facing the USCF Forums

Everybody who has been following the USCF forums at
http://www.uschess.org/forums will have notice a serious problem.

Recently, at the insistence of Joel Channing, the USCF purchased
"Internet insurance" for $15,000. The purpose of this insurance was
supposed to be to protect the USCF in case somebody sued over something
posted to the forums.

Instead, however, what has happened is massive deletions of postings
and retention of other postings which are favorable or unfavorable to
certain candidates for election.

In addition, candidates and board members have been suspended from
posting for making statements contrary to the majority views of members
of the board.

In other words, dissent is being quashed.

In particular, any posting expressing negative views about Susan
Polgar or Joel Channing has been deleted.

Any posting in favor of Sam Sloan or Joe Lux, who are also candidates
for election, is subject to deletion.

In addition, last week board members Sam Sloan and Beatriz Marinello
were suspended from posting supposedly for revealing confidential
information about the USCF. Yet, those who made the suspension have
refused to state what confidential information was revealed, and in
fact there was none.

Here is the announcement of four complete threads that were deleted
yesterday:

"Four threads have been removed from the public areas of the forum for
review by the Executive Board for possible sanctions against one or
more of the posts in those threads (possibly by multiple posters).

"Those threads a

""******** 84 ********

"Joe Lux on the US Championship
"Vision Statements
"Goichberg's List
"The Case against Susan Polgar

"******* 84 *******

"It is possible other threads may be pulled for review as well."

I believe that the USCF could be headed for a lawsuit over this, and I
doubt that the Internet insurance will cover this. Deleting postings by
political opponents purely for political reasons is clearly actionable,
especially when an election in a 501(c)(4) corporation is involved..

I urge the powers that be, especially Mr. Goichberg and Mr. Channing,
to stop this right now.

Sam Sloan