webber@klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU (Webber) (04/28/87)
In article <7967@utzoo.UUCP>, henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: > Unfortunately, there *is* a legal reason to do it: real, true broadcasts > and point-to-point phone calls are *not* identical in the eyes of the law. > There is a lot of uncertainty as to just how Stargate would be treated if > it came to a court case, but it resembles a radio broadcast a whole lot > more than it resembles a phone system. If the basis for treating a phone call differently is that the phone call is expected to be private, then there is certainly no relevance to phone calls with 1000's of people on both end. With many calls going over microwave these days, it would be interesting to know on what other basis one would invoke phone law for Usenet and not for Stargate. > To the extent that your argument holds water at all, what it shows is that > our current scheme is legally dubious: if what we are doing is truly > broadcasting, then laws about libel etc. most assuredly do apply, and the > only thing that saves us is the lack of any central organization to be sued. Actually, something else protects us. There is no way you could ever establish a chain of evidence connecting me to the message appearing on your screen now. The sooner lawyers realize that computers are part of a world that has nothing to do with their world, the better for all concerned. > ... The people behind Stargate evidently don't consider > either their necks or Stargate's to be expendable. Well, I hardly consider Stargate indispensable. Particularly if it buys Usenet more legal trouble than it had before. So far it seems to want to evade responsibility by setting up moderators to be clay pigeons (with obvious responsibility for what they forward). Also it will expose Usenet to the beancounters by forcing people to enter into contractual relations with Stargate in order to benefit from its existance. It is even messing up the technical groups: what will become of all the sources posted on the condition that no commericial use is made of them? One would think that Stargate is benefitting commericially from anything it broadcasts. > I would expect that Stargate would eventually have paid legal counsel, by > the way. See above comments on central organizations: any visible central > point is just asking for lawsuits, and does have to be prepared for the > possibility. Certainly the need to hire lawyers is a great reason to avoid centralized control. ----------------------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!topaz!webber) The law has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of. (corruption of a saying of Blaise Pascal)
kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) (04/28/87)
In article <205@brandx.klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU>, webber@klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU (Webber) writes: > Actually, something else protects us. There is no way you could ever > establish a chain of evidence connecting me to the message appearing > on your screen now. Nonsense. You get called as a witness (there's no "5th amendment" in civil matters) and asked. If you lie you risk being discovered sometime, and that's perjury. Believe it or not, almost no-one (you included) is willing to risk a serious criminal offence for the purposes of avoiding liability in a civil action, it's simply not worth it. > The sooner lawyers realize that computers are > part of a world that has nothing to do with their world, the better > for all concerned. If anything was really needed to demonstrate how meaningless your postings have all been, this is it. There is nothing in the world that has "nothing to do with their [lawyers] world". Nor will there ever be. Nor should there ever be. Lawyers decide what is part of their world, and its in their own interests to expand that as much as possible. Just as computer scientists get to decide what is relevant to the computer world .. what would you think if your local plumber told you that the sooner that computer scientists realized that computers have nothing to do with washing machines the better .. especially if you just happened to be in the process of creating code for a washing machine controller chip. Please return to kindergarten, and let the net continue to degrade at its own grinding pace, instead of trying to push it down. And as to whether the posters of articles necessarily agree that they are a good thing to have posted .. nonsense .. I'm sure that in about 5 minutes I'll be certain that this was not an intelligent idea at all, if only this newsgroup was moderated the moderator could dump this trash into the waste pile where it belongs. Everybody would be better off. kre
webber@klinzhai.UUCP (04/29/87)
In article <1597@munnari.oz>, kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) writes: > In article <205@brandx.klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU>, webber@klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU (Webber) writes: > > Actually, something else protects us. There is no way you could ever > > establish a chain of evidence connecting me to the message appearing > > on your screen now. > > Nonsense. You get called as a witness (there's no "5th amendment" > in civil matters) and asked. If you lie you risk being discovered > sometime, and that's perjury. ... Well I would certainly not advocate perjury. However, with all the large companies handling news, one would not thing that lack of a wealthy target would justify the lack of suits. While my partly baked idea may have oversimplified the defense, I still think a lawyer would make something of the unreliability of anything that is in a computer. As Jean Giraudoux was want to remark: `No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth'. Of course, they might also be interested in the classic CMU study showing that people flame more online than offline. Perhaps it is just the people smart enough to read news are too smart to get involved with pointless litigation. I would still love to know how a computer system that provides news to a thousand users is protected by the fact that it got the news off a phone line. I think I am not the only one with partly baked ideas. > > The sooner lawyers realize that computers are > > part of a world that has nothing to do with their world, the better > > for all concerned. > > If anything was really needed to demonstrate how meaningless your postings > have all been, this is it. > > There is nothing in the world that has "nothing to do with their [lawyers] > world". Nor will there ever be. Nor should there ever be. Lawyers > decide what is part of their world, and its in their own interests to > expand that as much as possible. Yes there should be. It is immoral that the government attempts to control its citizenry with rules that it is hopeless for most of them to ever understand. Currently we have a nation of courts and lawyers, but not one of laws. It may take a long time, but eventually this will change. Such folly can not be put up with forever. However, clearly the net will have to continue to persevere in the midst of such foolishness. However, as a step in the right direction, I think we should insist on a complete explanation of any legal opinion that is used as a basis for influencing network policy. ---------------------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!topaz!webber)
lear@aramis.UUCP (04/29/87)
From: kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) Date: 28 Apr 87 16:29:45 GMT > Nonsense. You get called as a witness (there's no "5th amendment" > in civil matters) and asked. If you lie you risk being discovered > sometime, and that's perjury. It is extremely hard to prove that any person sent any particular message on a network such as this one. Good luck in taking any form of action against anyone when it requires that you prove said person actually sent a message. > There is nothing in the world that has "nothing to do with their [lawyers] > world". Nor will there ever be. Nor should there ever be. Lawyers > decide what is part of their world, and its in their own interests to > expand that as much as possible. Because it is very hard to verify that any given person was actually involved with any given event, lawyers would be very wise to rely upon other source of income. They may attempt to expand as much as it is their right to, but lawyers will always be limited by the validity of evidence presented to them. This is not to say that there aren't interesting questions regarding use of information propagated by electronic means - just that such issues are more complicated when a violation cannot be pinned on a person or even a site. > And as to whether the posters of articles necessarily agree that they > are a good thing to have posted .. nonsense .. I'm sure that in about > 5 minutes I'll be certain that this was not an intelligent idea at > all, if only this newsgroup was moderated the moderator could dump > this trash into the waste pile where it belongs. Everybody would > be better off. Who am I to argue with this statement? Only, I enjoy the silliness that goes on in this group. It is better then net.bizarre or talk.religion.misc ever were! Thanks for the entertainment, guys! I am sure the stargate crew is enjoying it, too! -- [lear@rutgers.edu] [{harvard|pyrnj|seismo|ihnp4}!rutgers!lear]
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) (05/11/87)
In article <1597@munnari.oz>, kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) writes: > In article <205@brandx.klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU>, webber@klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU (Webber) writes: >> [we are protected by lack of evidence connecting person to posting] > Nonsense. You get called as a witness [...] and asked. If you lie > you risk being discovered sometime, and that's perjury. Believe it > or not, almost no-one (you included) is willing to risk a serious > criminal offence for the purposes of avoiding liability in a civil > action, it's simply not worth it. Really? What are the alternatives? If I lie, there is possibly some chance (very slim, in my opinion) that anyone can prove it's a lie. But if I don't lie, <generic-big-company> will bankrupt me making me fight some stupid lawsuit. Some choice. What is the penalty for perjury? Perhaps an expected-value analysis is called for. (This is not to say I actually would deny making any of my postings! Much safer to simply avoid the problem by not pushing the limits of what's ok.) der Mouse (mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp)