Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 20:30:44 -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.3.93.970422195433.20794Z-100000@sidhe.memra.com> In-Reply-To: <335D67D5.583D@rust.net>
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On Tue, 22 Apr 1997, Sysadmin wrote: > Frankly, I doubt that there has been any significant percentage of child > pornography ever distributed on Usenet - even in the groups that are > specifically designated for that and nothing else. Straw man. Two years ago I wondered whether this stuff really existed so I connected to an ISP that offered binaries (my ISP did not carry them at all) and had a look. Within an hour I was able to discover pictures of 9-year-old girls having intercourse with an adult male penis inside them. And a couple of pictures of a thre-year old girl sucking a male penis. And a picture of a boy and a girl about 10-11 years old having intercourse. It may not be there every day and it may not be as easy to find in the flood of binary postings, but I highly doubt that it has disappeared from USENET. For instance there is the website operator that was just arrested for running a service that auto-decodes USENET binaries and makes them available via HTTP. > I don't think there has been *any* case where a person has been jailed > for distributing illegal copies of software - this is SPA fearmongering, > though I have heard of some fines. Fines are nothing to sneeze at. They can put you out of business just as fast as getting arrested. > No, _distributors_ of documents, like bookstores, are _not_ liable as a > rule - _publishers_ are. If possession of cild porn is a felony in the USA then how do bookstores get an exemption from that law? > And the fact is the legal > precedents already protect ISP's against liability for uncensored Usenet > distribution (though not the content-selected kind, apparently). Bull! The problem is that there are *NO* legal precedents one way or the other. And there are people who are currently preparing for court cases that they hope *WILL* set precedents that will make ISP's liable. > The unsupported report of "rumblings and rumors" doesn't even deserve an > answer. Have you read the material at http://www.ocaf.org ? Do you think they are going to do their work out in the open? It is a fact that they are "educating" police forces in several parts of the country and it is a fact that some people inside the police forces have let it be known that investigations are underway, either inadvertently or by telling friends at local ISP's. Obviously, none of the people involved are willing to have their names made public. You don't have to believe me and you don't have to do a darn thing. But if you care about minimizing your risk then you will be asking your lawyer about the actual state of the laws in your area and what you could do to minimze your risk. If your lawyer doesn't appear to be familiar with the relevant law, then search out a new lawyer. Don't just take my word for it. > On this you base the conclusion that the "Entire Independent > [as opposed to?] ISP industry" will be "wiped out"? That "the danger of > this is very real?" There are a lot of people out there, possibly telco employees, possibly fundamentalists, who *WOULD* stoop to dirty tricks to get ISP's charged. The courts have shown that it doesn't matter if the material was planted by the police themselves. If you possess and distribute it, you are guilty. Now it would only take two or three police raids across the country in the space of a week or two and the national media would be all over this thing. Yes it *COULD* have a decidedly negative impact on the independent ISP industry if the media paints everyone with the same black brush while pointing out that the newsgroups in question are not listed on AOL's service. > Some great secret police god department that rules > all the others is going to somehow organize them for a "sweep"? Snigger. The FBI organizes this sort of thing with local police departments all the time. Since the child porn is being distributed across state lines the FBI has been investigating this subject for years and trying to figure out what to do and what will win in court. > Because...? Your belief, evedently based on little other than > speculation, is what the ISP world should go by? > > I did see my lawyer. And she told me exactly what you disbelieve to be > the case. Fine. If you trust the lawyer and she explained the relevant caselaw to you, then that's good. It also gives you a leg to stand on if you ever do go to court because you acted as a reasonable and prudent citizen would. But I still think a second legal opinion would be a darn good idea. > > And since USENET is not intended to be a file transfer mechanism and > > Usenet is nothing _but_ a file transfer system. Most groups intended > for text files. USENET is *NOT* a file transfer system. It is a message transfer system that uses a message format based on RFC-822 email format. There is nothing in the standards that requires the messages to be individual text files. And if you examine a binaries posting you will see that it contains an encoded file encapsulated in several messages. But if you examine a normal discussion message you will find no evidence of encapsulation or special encodings. Courts do take these things into account, you know. > Ah, now we get to the _real_ motivation. Hey, everyone! Someone's > afraid he'll lose customers unless he can persuade most of his > competitors to drop the same inconvenient-to-provide but popular > service! I haven't been an ISP owner for almost a year and a half now. I built up my ISP from scratch starting in August 1994 with a policy of no alt.binaries.* and no alt.sex.* and it never hurt the business. We had a steady stream of new customers coming in from other ISP's in town and we never lost any to other local ISP's. We know that because there were few lost customers and we asked each one why they left. Most moved out of town. And I will shortly be working for a backbone network provider that will be selling T1's to ISP's and providing a full newsfeed. However we will only support NNTP peering and will not operate a news spool. Messages will flow into our news server and be buffered only as long as it takes to forward them to all NNTP peers. No-one will know what is in the buffers or have any record of what flows through the system. > You really have got to be freaking joking... (wait a minute, to people > troll in mailing lists?) The SPA doesn't get _anywhere_ in courts. > They rule by pure unfounded threat, misinformation, and press release > bluster. I don't know enough about the US situation to answer this. I did have some discussions with some EFF people who are planning to meet with the SPA and I did point out to them how ISP services actually work. I'm not sure whether they agreed with me but I did point out that ISP's rent website storage space like landlords rent office space and we can't be held responsible for what our tenants do with the space. But I'm not so confident about USENET. > Well, if they stopped at your server, they stopped at your newsfeed > ISP's too. That's not how a dedicated NNTP newsfeed server works. Whether there is some INN hackery to avoid spooling and expiry or whether you run specialized NNTP perring software, the messages do not stop at the core newsfeed servers. > The Federal Sherman Anti-trust Act clearly prohibits businesses and > their agents, such as ISPs, from conspiring or attempting to conspire > with others in order to limit competition, _not_ limited to fixing > prices but also as to restricting the availability of services. > > Want to talk (literally) million-dollar fines? Want to talk triple > damages? Try to threaten or otherwise persuade competing ISPs into > dropping the parts of Usenet you don't want your customers to be able to > get. Remember persons other than the Government's employees can file > such suits. That's a more real threat than non-functioning laws or > overofficious constables (not a threat from me, but a method of doing > business the aforesaid consulted lawyer warned me strongly against). You'll note that no-one has filed suit against Richard Depew of ARRM fame. Nor has anyone filed suit against Paul Vixie for his spam-blocking work. In fact, I don't think you can charge "individuals" under the Sherman act, especially not individuals who are not engaged in the business in question. 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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