dgelbart@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Dave Gelbart) (01/09/91)
Hello all, just some comments and questions: [Keep in mind here when I talk about BBSs, I am referring to the message sections...I won't go into file sections here, but I think that if a Sysop checks a file before it goes online he/she should be responsible for it] From what I know of law and lawyers, it seems likely that they [the courts and govt.] will try to apply as much of previously established law to this new medium [electronic communication] as possible...after all, dealing with it as something entirely new wouldn't allow them to use all those nifty antedeluvian precedents. The obvious analogy for the electronic BBS and network would be the publication, and possibly this has already been used legally [I don't keep up with the news as much as I should]. A newspaper can be sued if it prints a defamatory letter to the editor, can the same thing happen to a sysop? Except on a censored system like Prodigy, the sysop almost never sees a posting before it goes on to the message bases, and possibly not even after that. [Which means that Prodigy, for example, fits the newspaper analogy VERY well: could that mean if they do let a defamatory message get through they would be more vulnerable to a lawsuit? Although I would think that users have to sign some sort of 'everything I say is my fault and not Prodigy's' type of agreement before they join up] In last issue of EFF News, it mentions an article dealing with this ['L. Becker, Jr., The Liability of Computer Bulletin Board Operators for Defamation Posted by Others, 22 Conn. L.Rev. 203 (1989)']. If someone could e-mail this to me, or post it, I'd be grateful, though don't go to too much trouble as I could probably get it through a law student I know. Actually, the publication-type analogy that seems to fit best [for a BBS at least, I don't really understand nets well enough to be sure but I don't think it would work well with them] is something from SF fandom*: the APA, or amateur press association. In an APA, each member prints up a section [as many copies as there are members], which usually is made of comments on other members' sections, all the sections are stapled together, then sent back to the members. There are a number of flaws with this analogy, but to me it seems to work better than the newspaper or letter column analogy. Comments? * That has now spread to other areas of interests as well, so don't even THINK of flaming me for that.... Dave Gelbart dgelbart@questor.wimsey.bc.ca P-Mail: #12 4255 Sophia St., Vancouver, British Columbia, V5V 3V6, CANADA
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (01/10/91)
Well, I wrote a longer article on this theme some time ago, but I will rehash. I defined four classes of possible system, ranging from anonymous free-for-all to a full blown publication like Prodigy. The two middle classes were the non-anonymous but unmonitored system and the non-anonymous but semi-monitored system. I think it is likely that the best we could hope for is to have the law accept the concept of open forums as a new discussion medium. If you don't verify who users are, you will have to take responsibility for their postings if you distribute them, I suspect. I doubt the law will ever allow the existence of systems that distribute harmful information without any path back to the author. What we need is to get the law to recognize systems where the author is verified (not necessarily revealed without a court order, but verified) and the author takes some or all responsibility for postings. This would be a good thing for the EFF to lobby for, in my opinion. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473