Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 16:35:05 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jay D. Nelson" <jdn@qiv.com> To: Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com> Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Liability (was: Binaries in Usenet (was: News...)) Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.95.970419160129.864A-100000@acp.qiv.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.93.970419121338.4316F-100000@sidhe.memra.com>
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That's reassuring -- thanks for the reply. (And a good hint about Pine.) I'm not an ISP, but in a sense, I'm stuck in the middle. I'm the admin between my company's ISP and our users. Due to other liabilities, e.g., sexual harrasment, child porn, or "objectionable material", etc., on company systems, liability, similar to an ISP (I hope but not sure) falls on me. This is a subject that has my full attention. I am in Austin, so I'm familiar with Steve Jackson. He was vindicated but nearly destroyed with not even an apology. I think we should be _very_ alert. FWIW, I agree that binaries have no place in news and would be happy to see them go. You see, while my ISP is sucking up 3-4 gigs of reposted porn, (or X number of joe users redownload reposted porn) my internet response goes down the toilet. Anyway -- my 2 cents. Thanks for listening. -- Jay On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Michael Dillon wrote: -> ->On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Jay D. Nelson wrote: -> ->> Along with news, what about my encrypted mail. Is an ISP a potential ->> federal target if a user's encrypted mail is suspected of "terrorist" ->> communication? -> ->Target? The ISP might be served with a court order to give copies of the ->email to the FBI but they will not attempt to lay any charges against the ->ISP. -> ->> What is an ISP's liability if they filter out encrypted ->> mail? -> ->Major liability. The Electronic Communications and Privacy Act require the ->ISP to deliver the email to the recipient and to *NOT* look at the email's ->contents unless it is absolutely necessary in maintaining the email ->system. So the law says that an ISP has to mind their own business and the ->same law also requires the FBI to *NOT* interfere with the operations of ->the mail server or prevent the delivery of mail to other recipients. This ->has been clearly settled by case law in the Steve Jackson Games case. -> ->Now in other countries there are usually no specific laws that apply but ->ISP's probably would be found legally responsible to behave the same way ->as the postal system in those countries. This generally means that once ->mail is on your server you cannot look at the contents and you must do ->everything possible to deliver the email to the recipient. -> ->Because of this, whenever I have had to help a customer get rid of ->multimegabyte email messages, I always use PINE to delete them so that I ->cannot see the content of any messages in the mailbox. -> ->> BTW, I never felt much need of encryption until the gov't got their ->> panties in a knot over key escrow. -> ->The UK government also has their knickers in a knot over key escrow. -> ->BTW, I am not a lawyer. -> ->Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting ->Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-250-546-3049 ->http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com ->
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