WorldCom Forced To Block Questionable Sites

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 19, 2002 @07:11AM from the line-between-evil-and-anti-evil dept.

Cutriss writes "Seen on Wired, this article briefly mentions how the Pennsylvania State Government is forcing UUNet to block access to five child pornography sites, under their new state law. No mention was made as to whether they were domestic or foreign. I'm certainly no fan of kiddie porn, but this ruling also serves as a blow to the 'common carrier' status that any whatever-tiered ISP should have in theory, and in practice. Also, this is a state law, not a federal one, but the end result is nationwide. This isn't a whole lot different from Yahoo! France being sued for making auctions of Nazi propaganda viewable by French citizens."

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Re:Not a Common Carrier by isdnip · 2002-09-19 08:06 · Score: 1, Offtopic

You are correct. ISPs are not common carriers. There is specific law about who is and is not a common carrier. ISPs are "information service" providers. Under the Telecommunications Act, common carriers are subject to Title II regulation, while ISPs are unregulated though to some extent technically subject to Title I.

Some laws do specify what an ISP can and cannot do, or must do when told. It's not quite the same as common carrier rules, but has a lot in common.