[90381] in Cypherpunks
Re: Report on UN conference on Internet and racism
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Tue Nov 18 18:41:44 1997
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9711182331.A19441-0100000@inet.uni2.dk>
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 17:59:15 -0500
To: Peter Herngaard <pethern@inet.uni2.dk>
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Cc: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu, cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
My take on it is that overseas citizens have no Constitutional rights.
However ISPs in the U.S. have rights that U.S. laws recognize and protect.
If a U.S. law prevented an ISP from contracting to put a web site online,
it would be like a law that prevented a U.S. book company from publishing a
book penned by a German. Or the Netly News from publishing an article
written by our London correspondent. Such a law would be facially
unconstitutional.
Perhaps the analogy between an ISP and publisher is inexact, but that's the
type of analysis I'd pursue.
-Declan
At 23:33 +0100 11/18/97, Peter Herngaard wrote:
>Does the First Amendment prevent the Congress from passing
>a law that would make it illegal for anyone who is outside the United
>States to
>set up a web site in the U. S. in violation of a local speechcode?
>For example, a German nazi organization could establish a WWW site in
>California out of reach
>of German law.
>Would it be constitutional to make a law barring foreign citizens from
>violating the speech
>codes of their home countries using a U. S. ISP?
