Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 14:06:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com> To: isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How many customers read news (was Re: News...) Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.93.970422135307.20794I-100000@sidhe.memra.com> In-Reply-To: <335D02D0.1607@rust.net>
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On Tue, 22 Apr 1997, Sysadmin wrote: > What country is this you live in? In the United States, we have civil > liberty laws prohibiting such behaviour by law enforcement officials, > of course I am not aware of the situation where you live, but I don't > see why Usenet should be governed based on the activities of a police > state where a distributor is treated as a publisher of information. In the United States it is illegal to distribute child pornography or illegal copies of software. There are numerous cases where store owners or BBS operators in the USA have been jailed for doing this. Now, is an ISP a distributor and thus liable under the law? Or are they merely the operator of a communications channel and therefore exempt from the law like telcos and trucking companies. So far this has not been fully decided, but one thing is for sure. USENET looks a lot more like distributing than beiong a comm channel and that's where the danger lies. Noone can be sure how the courts and the lawmakers will decide this one. But we can assess the risks and since the penalties are pretty severe, I think it makes sense to be conservative in assessing these risks. I don't want to see the entire independent ISP industry wiped out because of a police sweep for child pornography. And the danger of that is very real. There are rumblings and rumors, some of which are coming from people who have contacts inside various police forces. I can't be sure if the rumors are true and I am not a lawyer. But I think it would be wise for every ISP to consult their own lawyers on this and to make whatever moves they think are necessary to stay out of jail. I know a lot of ISP's think it is a catch-22 situation because they wrongly believe that removing any single USENET posting opens them up to charges, but leaving it alone makes them somehow invincible. I don't believe either is true. And since USENET is not intended to be a file transfer mechanism and since the volume of files travelling through USENET is now creating *OPERATIONAL* *DIFFICULTIES* for ISPs, I think it is a wise move to simply get rid of all binary files period regardless of what newsgroup tag is on them and regardless of what their actual or claimed content is. > I would think that the question is "is there a preponderance > of actually illegal vs nude or other legitimate material". One single illegal image is enough to send you to jail. And I haven't even said anything yet about the pirated software which may not send you to jail but will cause a severe hit in the pocketbook. Do you really want the SPA to become the country's largest ISP by virtue of forfeit? > As for the "drug dealer" junk, I don't understand. To try to fit > reality into the analogy you make, If your whole business is sending > packages, which you do not have the time to open or examine in detail, > do you become liable if someone slips such a package in among the > others? You are quite right. But USENET is not about delivering packages. With USENET the packets stop at your news server. And the buck stops there as well. If people can browse your news server looking for illegal porn images to download then you have problems because now you are the content provider every bit as much as the magazine store on the corner. How many magazine stores carry child porn? Why don't they carry it? 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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