jeff@gatech.UUCP (Jeff Lee) (01/25/85)
Pretending, for a moment, that we have stargate up and running, someone is
paying for it, and all the newsgroups are moderated to protect the carriers,
what is to prevent the moderators from being sued for something that they
thought was OK, but actually wasn't (in some lawyers eyes) ?? If the
newsgroups are moderated, there is a person for people to look to that is
"responsible" for what goes out, ie -- "don't look at us, man; we are just
the carrier".
When I think of moderators, editors, and other such "preprocessors" that must
go over things to protect the innocent, I am reminded of an incident that
occurred in my high school literary magazine during my senior year. The
magazine requested work from the students, all the editors went over the
submitted material, and it was sent in and the finished magazines were
returned and sold to try to cover the cost of publishing. One girl took a
copy that she had purchased home and her mother wanted to read it. The mother
remarked that she had seen this one poem before and sure enough, in one of
her old textbooks she had the poem. The school went crazy for a while hoping
that they didn't get sued and the girl was punished (I don't recall how).
The fact is, after 5-6 editors and several english teachers went over the
material, some no-no material STILL got published. Is there a precedent for
something like this in the law books, and would it extend to electronic
publication? Notice that this and libelous information are still subject
to prosecution even though they may be in a subscription-type format.
Just a thought,
--
Jeff Lee
CSNet: Jeff @ GATech ARPA: Jeff.GATech @ CSNet-Relay
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,rlgvax,sb1,unmvax,ulysses,ut-sally}!gatech!jeffjwg@galbp.UUCP (Joe Guthridge) (01/28/85)
The stargate seems like an interesting experiment. My concern is over the moderators that would be necessary. They would have to be sophisticated, perhaps even have a legal background, to avoid posting "problem" articles. This means their time would be expensive. Has anyone thought that this might not be volunteer labor - that we might have to PAY someone? Wouldn't the load require a full-time position? What does that do to the cost of the network? -- Joe Guthridge ..!akgua!galbp!jwg NOTE NEW MACHINE NAME ^^^^^