[97365] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: UK ISPs v. US ISPs (was RE: Network Level Content Blocking)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Sprunk)
Sat Jun 9 22:03:47 2007
From: "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org>
To: <admin@digibase.ca>
Cc: "North American Noise and Off-topic Gripes" <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 20:58:55 -0500
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Thus spake "Kradorex Xeron" <admin@digibase.ca>
> From my view, ISPs should continue their role as "passing the
> packets" and not say what their users can or cannot view. It's
> when ISPs start interfering with what their users do is when we
> will run into legal, political and otherwise issues that I'm sure
> none of us want to see.
IIRC, AOL got whacked by a court years ago because they censored some chat
rooms and not others. The court held that since they censored some content,
they lost their status as a common carrier and were liable for other content
they didn't censor (either by intent or mistake). This was a particularly
interesting case, since the implication was that ISPs who _don't_ censor
content _are_ common carriers, which I don't think has otherwise been
touched upon in the US.
S
Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
