Slashdot Mirror
New York ISP Held Liable For Newsgroup Content
jmoloug1 writes: "The New York State Attorney General has secured a guilty plea from an ISP for providing a newsgroup to its customers that peddled in child porn. While kiddie porn is a tough practice to defend, what is the next subject that an ISP will be held liable for due to the actions of its subscribers? Since the Attorney General is calling this a 'groundbreaking case' it's clear they intend to use this as a precedent. Do ISPs now have to monitor the content of newsgroups?" The question keeps coming up: how responsible is an ISP for content available through them?
But as for context, the orginal "raid" on Buffnet and another ISP (in Syracuse) happened just before elections a year or two ago. The Attorney General was up for reelection, and this was nothing but a set up to get him publicity. The way it worked was not that some J. Random User found the kiddie-porn, but someone from the AG's office posing as J. Random User setting them up. I'm not sure to what extent an ISP should be responding to every random caller on the line who is complaining about a Usenet article. If so, any ISP should start doing it to their competitors right now full time - that would tie up there customer service abilities!
Anyway, it didn't work and the AG lost the election. However, the new AG now had the case on his books and had to carry it through.
Let's hope Ashcroft does the same with the cases he inherited at the Federal level. I can think of one in particular ;-)
- If the AG had asked, BuffNET would have cut off the newsgroup.
Uh... that doesn't work either. Let me 'splain.When an NNTP gets a feed for all of the Newsgroups is subscribes to, it gets all of the messages that exist in any of those groups, including messages crossposted to other groups.
For example, a few years ago, I had a UUCP node and my upstream node would give me all of the "clean" heirarchys such as soc.*, rec.*, comp.* and so forth, but only hand-picked alt.* groups. The sysadmin refused to give me alt.drugs because he disapproved of it. He was doing me a huge favor giving me the UUCP feed, so I didn't make a fuss about it.
Anyway, I ended up subscribing to some groups that I could get, like soc.college that occaisionally had cross-postings from alt.drugs. When a discussion was cross-posted like this, it would end up getting into my feed. Of course, posts in this example should have had to do with recreational drugs and college social life, not just recreational drugs, so a lot of material was filtered out.
A year or so after I switched to a different feed, the newsgroup rec.drugs was finally approved amongst much controversy.
Anyway, if the ISP cuts off alt.porn.kids, then they still may end up with content from that group if (as many alt spammers do), there are cross-posts to similar groups such as alt.porn.very-young (these are not real groups AFAIK).
Followup-To: rec.birds
I miss the old days...
"No ISP should be displaying obviously morally-wrong material."
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
For whose values of "morally wrong"? And what values of "displaying"?
Has nobody realised yet that usenet doesn't work by what the servers do, but by what people post to them?
"(I could be wrong, there could be people who believe it is not wrong). "
I'm prepared to consider that it might not be. I don't know about `believe', that's my opinion and I reserve the right for it to differ. But it needs an occasional return to brass tacks to ask why kiddie-pr0n *is* wrong. And why it's illegal, and whether "wrong" & "illegal" are related in some way.
"ISPs who ban child pornography should be commended for fighting against obvious morally-wrong materials."
I think you'll find the vast majority do explicitly ban just about everything interesting you could ever want to do, in their T&Cs. And that's where this sort of thing should be left, between the user & the ISP.
I don't see how an ISP can be held liable for content. If you don't *like* content, that's your bad look-out. If you have a sociological problem, deal with it sociologically, don't sit there making up silly rules and having potentially devastating precedent-setting cases with all the force of the law behind it.
~Tim
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~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Assuming that the details involved articles in the local news server spool, what exactly do you want the ISP to do?
....
Delete the offensive articles? No problem.
Delete the offensive newsgroup? Big problem. Do you delete the entire comp.os.linux.* hierarchy because some idiot spams it with a single explicit picture? A dozen? What about the soc.motss.* hierachy? The alt.pagan.* groups? The soc.catholicism.* groups?
Oh, you said that this is different because it was (at a guess) alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen.hardcore? Have you actually looked at the content of that newsgroup? I have, before complaining to *my* ISP, and determined that there was literally nothing there (at the times I checked) which wasn't cross-posted to every other abpe newsgroup. Damn spammers! But since I didn't see anything other than "hot 14-year-old babes" who were clearly old enough to have 14-year-old daughters I didn't see any reason to contact my ISP.
On the one hand, there's nothing "there" so I shouldn't mind if the newsgroup is deleted. On the other hand, I've seen far too many people who don't understand why gay or (legitimate) pre-teen sexuality or wiccan/pagan or illicit drug information or any of a dozen other topics shouldn't also be banned. After all, "in this state sodomy is illegal (and it's against God's law everywhere)!" and "in this state the age of consent is 18 so no teenagers are fucking other teenagers and that's why the schools give absolutely no sex education lessons" and "drugs are illegal so nobody is taking them and therefore nobody needs to know how to recognize their friends are overdosing" or
Of course the ISP should remove specific articles containing obscene material. (Arguably, it should have forged a "cancel" message for it, so it would have been deleted from other servers as well.) The ISP should have probably had somebody monitor the newsgroup for a while after the complaint.
But it does not follow that it should have immediately deleted that newsgroup, or entire hierarchy, or entire fscking news server, because some of the articles were obscene.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Why not just enforce current laws, rather than making up non-sensical new ones specific to the internet. Go after the users who are breaking the law; the ISP's only involvement should be to assist the law enforcement authorities in their investigations (e.g. by supplying whatever records are necessary, once a search warrent has been issued).
I think if cyberspace were thought of as a physical location then most (if not all) existing laws would naturally apply as intended.
None of these articles indicate what newsgroup is being discussed.
If it was content being posted to comp.os.linux.advocacy I think it would be questionable for the ISP to know anything about this.
However if it was alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children or any of the other usenet groups which obviously contain child pornography, the ISP is responsible for not doing something about it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Perhaps because this matter wasn't really settled in a court--it was a plea bargain, which means it was never officially measured against the applicable laws. The ISP, in all likelihood, just decided that it was not worth its while to put up a strong defense, and copped a plea. They weren't tried, weren't found guilty, and no precedent has been set. Really, this is more about overzealous prosecutors than anything--and maybe not even that; if the cops really did contact the ISP previously, as the article indicates, and they didn't drop known porn channels, then taking them to court may have been the only recourse. Even companies exempted from liability for third-party content are responsible for complying with laws once they have been notified.
No relation to Happy Monkey
I'd like to know just what it is that you find so offensive about this.
Honestly, seek counseling, or learn to spell. Or both.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Guys, the law is NOT code. You don't write an algorithm. There is judgement and grey.
For example, if you are providing a channel, or hosting a site entitled Kittie Porn, you should be responsible. If you just pull everything down, you shouldn't. It's a judgement thing.
For example, Napster enables MP3 sharing. In and of itself, this is innocent. However, Napster will scan your hard drive for you and offer to share out all your MP3s. The problem with this is that while it is legal for me to rip a CD that I own (or I'll argue, a friend owns) for my own purposes, I can't legally share it out. Napster encourages you to do so. Intent matters.
For example, if google happens to index a kiddie porn site, they didn't intentionally do it and shouldn't be responsible.
If I provide a site that is a directory of kiddie porn sites, I SHOULD be responsible, even if I'm just linking. If I provide a link to a site that is legal porn, and they add kiddie porn, I shouldn't be.
Basically, if you are intentionally doing something shady, you are responsible. If something happens beyond your control, safe harbor should protect you.
Guh... why aren't the courts looking at the laws? I don't really understand that.
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RumorsDaily
The question at hand is this: How do we mold the early videotex environment so that noise is suppressed without limiting the free flow of information between customers?
The first obstacle is, of course, legal. As the knights of U.S. feudalism, corporate lawyers have a penchant for finding ways of stomping out innovation and diversity in any way possible. In the case of videotex, the attempt is to keep feudal control of information by making videotex system ownership imply liability for information transmitted over it. For example, if a libelous communication takes place, corporate lawyers for the plaintiff will bring suit against the carrier rather than the individual responsible for the communication. The rationalizations for this clearly unreasonable and contrived position are quite numerous. Without a common carrier status, the carrier will be treading on virgin ground legally and thus be unprotected by precedent. Indeed, the stakes are high enough that the competitor could easily afford to fabricate an event ideal for the purposes of such a suit. This means the first legal precedent could be in favor of holding the carrier responsible for the communications transmitted over its network, thus forcing (or giving an excuse for) the carrier to inspect, edit and censor all communications except, perhaps, simple person-to-person or "electronic mail". This, in turn, would put editorial control right back in the hands of the feudalists. Potential carriers' own lawyers are already hard at work worrying everyone about such a suit. They would like to win the battle against diversity before it begins. This is unlikely because videotex is still driven by technology and therefore by pioneers.
The question then becomes: How do we best protect against such "legal" tactics? The answer seems to be an early emphasis on secure identification of the source of communications so that there can be no question as to the individual responsible. This would preempt an attempt to hold the carrier liable. Anonymous communications, like Delphi conferencing, could even be supported as long as some individual would be willing to attach his/her name to the communication before distributing it. This would be similar, legally, to a "letters to the editor" column where a writer remains anonymous. Another measure could be to require that only individuals of legal age be allowed to author publishable communications. Yet another measure could be to require anyone who wishes to write and publish information on the network to put in writing, in an agreement separate from the standard customer agreement, that they are liable for any and all communications originating under their name on the network. This would preempt the "stolen password" excuse for holding the carrier liable.
Beyond the secure identification of communication sources, there is the necessity of editorial services. Not everyone is going to want to filter through everything published by everyone on the network. An infrastructure of editorial staffs is that filter. In exchange for their service the editorial staff gets to promote their view of the world and, if they are in enough demand, charge money for access to their list of approved articles. On a videotex network, there is little capital involved in establishing an editorial staff. All that is required is a terminal and a file on the network which may have an intrinsic cost as low as $5/month if it represents a publication with "only" around 100 articles. The rest is up to the customers. If they like a publication, they will read it. If they don't they won't. A customer could ask to see all articles approved by staffs A or B inclusive, or only those articles approved by both A and B, etc. This sort of customer selection could involve as many editorial staffs as desired in any logical combination. An editorial staff could review other editorial staffs as well as individual articles, forming hierarchies to handle the mass of articles that would be submitted every day. This sort of editorial mechanism would not only provide a very efficient way of filtering out poor and questionable communications without inhibiting diversity, it would add a layer of liability for publications that would further insulate carriers from liability and therefore from a monopoly over communications.
In general, anything that acts to filter out bad information and that is not under control of the carrier, acts to prevent the carrier from monopolizing the evolution of ideas on the network.
Seastead this.
If I own a business and put up a bulletin board (physical, not electronic) for my employees to use for free and somebody posts a piece of kiddie pron on it, am I liable? Should I have to put that bulletin board behind glass, lock it down, and have an approval process for new postings? What if they tape it to the glass? How the hell are we supposed to regulate the actions of someone else? Shit the police can't even regulate the speeds of someone else! What if someone posts not a picture of kiddie pron but a short story about underage sex? Am I liable? What am I liable for? The 1st Amendment covers that. Now it may offend some woman and she sues someone for sexual harrasment. Whos' she going to sue? Me? Do I have to have hire someone to stand next to that board and check the content of everything that's posted as it's posted? Does anyone else think this is royally fscked up?
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Dateline: Washington, D.C.
In breaking news today, the United States Government has been held responsible for the slaughter and oppression of thousands, at home and abroad.
"It's a fair cop," stated Representative Dick Gephardt. "What can I say? I like taking freedom and money from people."
"We've been playing our jackleg politico games for decades now. We've got a 2 trillion dollar budget and all of the guns, so what are you going to do about it?" asked House Majority Leader Dick Armey.
Including the massacre at Waco, the Body Count of the United States Government is now calculated as "more than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick" by most normal-thinking people in the country. "But, what can you do? They've got all the money and all the guns," exclaimed housewife Denise Smith.
In other news, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has been given a twirling wedgie by Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf. Hundreds stood idly by and watched, applauding in the end.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Warez and regular porn is one thing. Child porn is almost universally hated.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.