[13754] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Legal Issues on Blackholeing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Curtis Brown)
Mon Nov 17 12:18:06 1997
From: Curtis Brown <cbrown@bbnplanet.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 11:49:37 -0500
In-Reply-To: Paul Flores <pflores@ns1.wcg.net>
"Re: Legal Issues on Blackholeing (was AGIS signing up New Spamme" (Nov 17, 10:11am)
To: pflores@wcg.net, nanog@merit.edu
On Nov 17, 10:11am, Paul Flores apparently wrote:
> To sum it up:
> part of the CDA indicates that "No provider or user of an interactive
> computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any
> information provided by another information content provider"
>
> This woulds seem to indicate that an ISP can not be LEGALLY
> held accountable for the content published by a customer. (although
> in the case of UBE, I think the means, more so than the message, is
> the issue.) I don't think the issue of filtering comes into this at
> all.
I think (read 'hope') that you are reading too much into this.
Going back to non-specific cases regarding the operation and liabilities of
running a BBS I shall cite what I feel has been done in the past and seems as
if it may remain appropriate:
Cases against BBS operators for distributing illegal or offensive material seem
to be split, based solely on the level of participation which the operator
displays. For those operators that have shown a 'hands off' operational
approach, there has been little liability for content. For those operators that
take part in creating/managing their content, liability is usually complete.
In other words, the way I see this as applicable to ISPs follows: *service*
providers which supply TCP/IP access to the internet are liable only to ensure
their customers are aware of netiquette. *content* providers (i.e. AOL, MSN...)
are fully liable for all content which they manage/distribute.
Feedback?
cbrown@bbnplanet.com
Server Administration, GTE Internetworking.
