franka@hercules.UUCP (Frank Adrian) (01/17/85)
Over the past few weeks, people on this newsgroup have been using probability of lawsuit as a reason why the net should be moderated. I hope they don't get a false sense of security from this. There are several points at which a moderated net can be attacked legally more easily than an bulletin board type system. 1) Assumption of Responsibility If the network is unmoderated, the only certain legal point of attack is the submitter (remember, I said CERTAIN). In any case where the submitter is known, the onus of the posting would be most likely to fall on him. If unauthorized or disguised access is used, the most likely court outcome is that the STARGATE carrier would be treated as a common carrier whose medium had been tapped into. If the STARGATE carrier had made a reasonable attempt to locate the unauthorized user, no penalty is likely to be assessed (again, I said LIKELY. As with all things, laws are in the eyes of the beholders (or whichever judge you happen to draw)). On the other hand, with a moderated system, the moderator (and by default, the carrier) would seem to assume responsibility, along with the submitter, for any and all materials posted to the system, much in the same way that the publisher and editor of a magazine can be sued. This is much less of a legal gray area than the above. If somebody doesn't like what you said, you have assumed responsibility due to the restriction on submission and they can sue you to the max. The question is, then, if you can minimize the possibility of lawsuit (both real and nuisance) under the moderated or unmoderated scheme. On the moderated scheme, you have a much lower chance of posting offensive material, but a much higher chance that you would be held responsible for the contents of all articles. In the unmoderated scheme, you have the opposite situation. 2) Fairness of Moderation If submission rules are to be applied to newsgroups, they must be applied fairly to all. E.g., Jeff Sargent could claim discrimination if the moderator of mod.singles didn't want to hear his maunderings this week. The guidelines cannot be arbitrary. There must be substantial reasons to impose a rule. If either of these criteria are not followed, it would seem that a lawsuit could result. This is only a problem on the moderated system. An unmoderated system would have no such trouble. 3) Fairness of Access Creation of new groups also must be standardized. A small number of network administrators could be sued if they blocked creation of a new news- group. Think of each group analogous to a magazine, with the moderators as editors. There is nothing to stop an editor from keeping a given article from seeing the light of day. But it is illegal for a group of editors to stop a new magazine from being published. Again, with no moderation, anyone could start a new group. No hassle. 4) Selection of Administrators No company signs contracts or agreements to enter onto the USENET at this time. The policy is find a feed and get on. If there were to be administrators, there would have to be equality between the administrators and each site would have to have rights to choose these people. If any site felt they were being treated unfairly they could possibly sue. Again, no moderation, everyone gets his say and there is no case for lawsuit. 5) Enter the Feds By using a type of channel which is very tight in usage these days (satellite vs. phone lines), you bring the FCC into all of this. Can a site go to the FCC if it feels it is discriminated against in some way? In any case, if there is no moderation, all of this type of problem goes away. Well, anyway, these are five things that I thought of right off the top of my head. From a legal standpoint I think that the possibility of each happening goes down as we go from 1 to 5. These are, of course, possibilities only. However, I think I have shown (since none of these points have been tested in a court of law) that, legally, we could be in as much, if not more, trouble with a moderated network as with an unmoderated network and that those who hide behind legal issues in their attempt to censor articles are just blowing smoke. Any comments? Frank Adrian
tar@hou5g.UUCP (Tim Rock) (01/21/85)
I feel there is a more serious potential for a lawsuit where copy rights are violated then "fairness" on the network. I've seen so many cases where recipes are taken from cookbooks, source code submitted, magazine articles copied. This may have been commonly accepted because of the ease in which floppies and paper can be replicated. The difference here is that a record of the crime is available. I'm sure that the company that allowed this to happen would be libel, but would the companies that passed this along be too? We've been fortunate up til now because the victums do not subscribe to this network. If they did I'm sure we would have seen a test case. Tim Rock AT&T Information Systems
Bat Man@sdcc3.UUCP (rich) (01/22/85)
Has anyone ever been sued over anything done over the net? Or do you guys just like threatening each other alot??? from the home of Rocky & Bullwinkle... Commissioner Gordon...
wagle@iuvax.UUCP (01/22/85)
I pay for a magazine. Someone else is paying for this note. This is a very significant distinction, and one that your note does not seem to recognize.
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (01/22/85)
I don't think that any lawsuits have resulted from net-related items to date -- but I know of a couple of cases where suits almost happened due to messages that were seen as libel. One problem is who would get sued? You can't really authenticate message authorship, and the net is totally distributed. Of course, once clear targets (like a broadcast carrier in an operational service) are obvious, this could change. --Lauren--
tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (01/26/85)
Another source of lawsuits can be revelation of private or agreement-protected information. In practice a moderator might be very hard-pressed to detect such disclosure. (In the case I know the particulars of, a lawsuit was planned; it was called off only because the information turned out not to be illegally obtained or in any way protected. In that case, no attempt was made to implicate the network as a whole, just the perpetrator.) Has there been research into the possible legal implications of an illegal revelation happening on a more centralized network like Stargate? Would the network's central organization be liable for damages, or could damage be limited to the person who did the posting? Could a moderator be found to be criminally negligent? -=- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim CompuServe: 74176,1360 audio: shout "Hey, Tim!" "Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains." Liber AL, II:9.
dw@rocksvax.UUCP (Don Wegeng) (01/27/85)
In article <2645@sdcc3.UUCP> Bat Man@sdcc3.UUCP (rich) writes: > >Has anyone ever been sued over anything done over the net? >Or do you guys just like threatening each other alot??? For obvious reasons I'm not going to go into details, but I am aware of at least one case where a site was threatened with a lawsuit after one of it's users posted a message which stated that another company's product was "garbage". This happened a couple of years ago. While this might be an extreme case, it shows that the need for moderation of some sort is not that off base. -- /Don "Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire. Psycho Killer..." arpa: Wegeng.Henr@Xerox.ARPA uucp: {allegra,princeton,decvax!rochester,amd,sunybcs}!rocksvax!dw || ihnp4!tropix!ritcv!rocksvax!dw
preece@ccvaxa.UUCP (01/28/85)
> Of course, once clear targets (like a broadcast carrier in an > operational service) are obvious, this could change. ---------- How is the broadcast carrier any more a clear target than the existing backbone sites? scott preece gould/csd-urbana ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!preece
jpm@bnl.UUCP (John McNamee) (01/28/85)
> >Has anyone ever been sued over anything done over the net? > >Or do you guys just like threatening each other alot??? > > For obvious reasons I'm not going to go into details, but I am aware > of at least one case where a site was threatened with a lawsuit after > one of it's users posted a message which stated that another company's > product was "garbage". This happened a couple of years ago. While > this might be an extreme case, it shows that the need for moderation > of some sort is not that off base. I hope that when guidelines for moderation are drawn up that negative product comments are not grounds for rejection. If a printed review called a product "garbage" the vendor might write a nasty letter to the editor and maybe not advertise in that publication, but they wouldnt sue them. I'm all for Stargate, but I would hate to see the moderation so strict that people couldn't express their feelings about bad products. -- John McNamee ..!decvax!philabs!sbcs!bnl!jpm jpm@Bnl.Arpa
scw@cepu.UUCP (Stephen C. Woods) (01/31/85)
In article <10300007@ccvaxa.UUCP> preece@ccvaxa.UUCP (Scott Preece) writes: >> Of course, once clear targets (like a broadcast carrier in an >> operational service) are obvious, this could change. >---------- >How is the broadcast carrier any more a clear target than the >existing backbone sites? Well, it's one (1) single target as opposed to many scattered targets. The only way to handle that would be to attack all targets (backbone sites) at once, this would drag in AT&T (two of the backbone sites are owned by AT&T) along with AT&T's HUGE legal staff, not a very inviting target. But a single medimum size company, (Stargate, whatever its real name is) is much more vunerable to this kind of attack and hence must cover its ass in advance. -- Stephen C. Woods (VA Wadsworth Med Ctr./UCLA Dept. of Neurology) uucp: { {ihnp4, uiucdcs}!bradley, hao, trwrb}!cepu!scw ARPA: cepu!scw@ucla-cs location: N 34 3' 9.1" W 118 27' 4.3"
ber@petrus.UUCP (02/02/85)
Check out the December 1984 ;login: from USENIX. "Legal Research on USENET Liability Issues" - Gail H. Shulman
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (02/03/85)
As those who attended the open board meeting at Dallas know, the Usenix board seems to be pretty much considering the legal opinions expressed to date to represent "worst case" views. Obviously, the more control you exercise, the more liabilities you may have. But as I pointed out recently, you can't just set up an uncontrolled pipeline without user authentication and possibly signed statements of responsibility from submitters (this from the same person who wrote the ;login piece). Since resource allocation is required in any case (the bandwidth available is not unlimited) you only have three choices: 1) Limit by $. You charge people to submit. If you have more money, you get to say more. Period. 2) Limit by time. Everyone gets the same space. It doesn't matter what you have to say -- everyone is assumed capable of submitting equally useful articles. Maybe everyone gets 5K/day or something. Period. I don't like either of these above two. They sure don't seem fair to me. 3) Quality control in terms of removal of repetitious or illegal messages at the least, or more magazine-like creation of digests and other materials (that is, higher quality information) at the most. There is obviously a continuum here, with a broad range of possibilities. I obviously like this one. I think it could result in a service worth spending your time reading. The Usenix board pointed out that the mere existence of liabilities isn't a reason not to do something--in this respect they wanted to make sure that the ;login piece was not misunderstood. Anyone who even publishes a newsletter (like ;login!) is accepting liability for the contents. So are all magazines, radio and TV stations, etc. What IS important is that the liabilities be understood. Then the decision regarding what level of liability is appropriate, relating to the sort of service deemed useful, can be made reasonably. --Lauren--