era@hao.UUCP (Ed Arnold) (04/16/86)
I'm hoping answers to the questions I'm posing here have previously been posted to the stargate group, and one of you can answer them in short order. These questions are on the liability issues relating to Stargate. At the Dallas Usenix conference (Jan. 85), Lauren Weinstein's talk was followed by a discussion of liability issues from Susan Nycum of the law firm of Gaston Snow & Ely Bartlett. That talk wasn't published in the Proceedings, but the gist of the talk was that there are serious liability problems with Stargate which stem from the legal differences between a "common carrier" and a "broadcaster". Four letter words are ok when using a common carrier, but not ok when using a broadcaster - even when the "broadcaster" is a subcarrier on a satellite tv channel. My questions are: 1) Has there been any progress in the legal arena to resolve the problem? 2) Is there any technical solution, e.g. message body encryption, which can get around the legalities? Certain broadcasters (both atmospheric and cable) have used scrambling devices to make controversial materials, such as X-rated channels, inaccessible to the general public, which appears (to me, a legal novice) to be a method of legally transforming a broadcast channel into a common carrier. Does anyone know the *legal* reason why encryption is *not* a solution to the Stargate liability problem? Thanks for your assistance ... -- Ed Arnold * NCAR (Nat'l Center for Atmospheric Research) PO Box 3000 * Boulder, CO 80307-3000 * 303-497-1253 era@ncar.csnet * era%ncar@csnet-relay.arpa * ...!hao!scdpyr!era
ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu.UUCP (04/18/86)
In article <2054@hao.UUCP> era@hao writes: >My questions are: > >1) Has there been any progress in the legal arena to resolve the problem? Not to my knowledge - it will take a test case to determine if encryption, for example really does give one common carrier status. On the other hand, the courts and Congress seem to want to treat Cellular Phone systems as common carriers, even though there is no encryption. >2) Is there any technical solution, e.g. message body encryption, which > can get around the legalities? Certain broadcasters... have used > scrambling ... which appears to be a method of legally transforming a > broadcast channel into a common carrier. MIT is using encryption with an FM subcarrier research project, more to protect the information being transmitted than for liability reasons, but certain lawyers felt that encryption would give more credence to the assertion that we were a common carrier or private radio station rather than a broadcaster. This probably won't get settled until somebody gets sued and there is a court decision. Problem is, nobody wants to stick their necks out, so there's no knowledge of how far one can go... -- - Ralph W. Hyre, Jr. Internet: ralphw@c.cs.cmu.edu (cmu-cs-c.arpa) Usenet: ralphw@mit-eddie.uucp Fido: Ralph Hyre at Net 129, Node 0 (Pitt-Bull) Phone: (412)CMU-BUGS
ln63soi@sdcc7.UUCP (ANTHONY INTRIERI) (04/24/86)
In article <2054@hao.UUCP> era@hao writes: >My questions are: > > > Is there any technical solution, e.g. message body encryption, which > can get around the legalities? Certain broadcasters... have used > scrambling ... which appears to be a method of legally transforming a > broadcast channel into a common carrier. If its just 4 letter words you're worried about, a pattern matching front end would work. Just grep for offensive words and turn them into stuff like: sh*t, f--k, or even ****. Other liability issues would be difficult to detect. Maybe you could put in disclaimers like: "the writer of this message is solely responsible for it's content..." Paul van de Graaf U. C. San Diego