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Internet Service Providers Not Liable for Content
biodork writes "
A bout of sanity in the courts. Prodigy is NOT responsible for defamatory material sent over its network. Further, they may not be responsible for the material posted in their bulletin boards." This case has been kicking around since 1994. Finally a real, clear-cut, precedent-setting decision.
It's all fine and dandy now that at least one court realizes that ISP's only act as carriers, and are not responsible for the content transmitted through them. Great, this is nice for us privacy freaks and all that.
But still, from the other point of view, you still haven't really solved the problem. All this proves is that you can't make ISPs trace info so that you can track down abusers. But I'm just wondering, supposing privacy concerns become priority in the future -- meaning no one is legally allowed to monitor our Net activities, store personal info, and strong encryption becomes the norm. This is all great for privacy-aware users like us. But what about people who abuse it? Is there some way to both preserve our privacy, yet not make it impossible to track down abusers when it's necessary? Or will privacy necessarily entail the impossibility of tracking down Net criminals?
Maybe some people think, forget about the abusers, as long as we have our privacy. But this is like saying, forget about robbers, let's just make sure the police have no rights to search our belongings and we'll be happy. Then how would you mete out justice to robbers? This doesn't solve the problem, it only (rather foolishly) ignores it. How about on the Net? Can privacy be preserved yet at the same time it's possible to do something about Net crime?
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
The ISP's have to ok the newsgroup so they obviously know by OKing a newgroup with the words pictures and pedophilia or binaries and warez that they will be carrying illegal content. Should they be held liable for such an outright disregard for human decency?
Maybe we should just allow anyone to run around under any pseudonym they chose, and allow them to take out several driver's licences, bank accounts, etc, in various names that couldn't be tracked back to them.
Do you like spam and e-fraud?
You aren't losing any privacy by ID-ing yourself to an ISP, really now. See my response to the next comment as well.
It's not exactly hearsay. Everyone I have encountered who uses napster (around 30 people), no *one* uses it for legal purposes. I would say that is some suggestive evidence. OF course its circumstantial, but I think its enough to go to trial for and try to subpena for more hard evidence (e.g. have napster monitor the mp3s transfered, and then estimate how much of them are illegal).
My wrong-doing. I see your point. I believe my other point is still valid though.
in another sense, an internal mail system is not an ISP. Also check the following quotes from the story...
But aside from resolving the dispute in this particular case, the Court articulated a cautious wait-and-see approach to what it clearly perceives as an evolving body of law. "Given the extraordinarily rapid growth of this technology and its developments, it is plainly unwise to lurch prematurely into emerging issues, given a record that does not at all lend itself to their determination," Judge Rosenblatt wrote for the Court.
and
Judge Rosenblatt expressed concern that going beyond the issues necessary to decide Lunney v. Prodigy would "entail something very much like drafting advisory opinions. Misdirected or misapplied, they can create the very kind of uncertainty, or confusion, that purposeful decisional law seeks to eliminate."
It seems to me that the court is taking a very conservative (in legal terms) view; i.e. Don't make any new decisions, laws etc, until we have to.
To your first point - No. The person who uses the account does not, and should not, have to be the same one who registered it. Again, from personal experience, I registered - and pay for, an ISP account for my younger sister. She lives on the East coast, I on the West. I built her a PC, and shipped it to her, with her ISP account all set up. I agreed to pay for her account until she graduates High School. I find no basis for any complaint regarding this.
The second point, about "One should at least have proof that the name isn't entirely false". Well, Mr. Iguana2000 (interesting name), I wonder how much you really are committed to your comments?!?
The fact is, I can walk into a public forum, such as a park, and begin to communicate to everyone while stating my name is Ben Franklin. Does this mean I should be ID'd by everyone who walks by? Or perhaps by the Park operators? This position is ludicrous. An ISP account, or a Forum username is not the same as a drivers license or bank account.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
IANAL, but this is the New York State Court of Appeals, not a federal court, which means that it's certainly not binding outside of New York, and prolly not binding on federal courts within New York.
Beyond that, the article quotes Michael J. Silverberg, an attorney for Prodigy, as saying "The Court is saying, under New York law and without going to federal law and without having to determine the scope of the Communications Decency Act, that this kind of case doesn't stand up.". Since it doesn't interpret any law which is applicable outside of New York, it isn't even of much use to point to and say "This is how New York interprets this law.".
It's a good decision, certainly, but I don't think that it's The Decision which grants ISPs Common Carrier status.
People always have the option of viewing ALL messages, so it's not really editing. It's just an option to select some messages that some other people happen to agree with.
Computers. You can't live with them, you can't live without them.
The ISPA (Internet Service Providers Association Belgium) regrets that, according to this ruling, Belgian ISPs are held responsible for the content of webpages of their customers. Unfortunately the article on the ISPA website is not available in English, only in Dutch and French.
Driver's licences are different. Cars kill. (Ok, not by themselves.) Just like guns. This is the reason why driver's licences (and gun licences) are needed.
Moderate this down, for a change.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
Nope. Because /.'s moderation system requires the participation of the readers as well. You can choose not to filter, so the moderation is equivalent to a critic reviewing a movie, not a censor deleting parts of it.
Censor : Function: transitive verb - to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable. It can be (validly) argued that moderating a post down due to objectionable is supressing it. Just a thought.
You bring up an interesting point regarding the strict definition of the meaning of the word Censor and what it means to be "suppressed or deleted".
I believe that a very strong argument could be made for 'suppressed' information if the default setting on the 'Threshhold' was 0 or higher.
However, I think making the deleted argument would be almost imposible.
Either way, /. assumes no Editoral responsibility for content in the posts submited, and that was pivitol in this case.
Both ethically, and possibly pragmatically -- their case is less clear-cut when suing the ISP, so while the potential payoff was much greater, the chance of winning anything at all was somewhat less.
It's still not zero, since it wasn't the Supreme Court...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
But now that they have common carrier status, they risk losing it if they attempt to regulate what people do with their access.
What's the difference between a message board and web content? Both are under the direct control of the subscriber and there is no reason that someone could not change web content as often as they sent an email or posted to a message board. How does a large internet provider police this? It doesn't seem reasonable to make the ISP's/Hosting Services responsible, though I can see the argument for it. And if they are held accountable, wouldn't they have to adopt a very conservative policy. This would lead to censorship.
There are some major differences between the local bullitain boards, and e-mail or web sites that are purely transferred.
If you read the stadard legal disclaimers on the ISP stuff, most bullitain boards claim ownership of anything posted on them.
This may mean that the message is the ISP's legal responisibility, however, it would be nigh impossible to demonstarte intent.
In California Law, auto accidents are considered the fault of the last person who could have avoided them. Similarly, by reserving the right to edit content, even if they do not, the ISP is creating a last failure point for witch it is in some sense liable. Since the ISP is easier to target than some vauge net entity on the other side, and because it is guaranteed to have deeper pockets, the ISP will be sued for it's part of the liabilty before the actual culprint.
I don't necessarily agree with the line of reasoning, but it could certainly be sold to a jury, and probably to some friendly judges as well.
I suppose a similar case could be made with a normal bulletain board, and some offensive note posted on it. In that case, noone sane would think twice about holding the owner of the board responsible, but I wouldn't doubt that an institution could be sued for content of one of its bulletain boards if it was deemed obscene.
I suppose a good way to describe it is that if all communication were strongly encrypted, then the last point of mutability, i.e. the last place where the text was unencryped, and hence editable could be considered a liable point, however, if the info is ecrypted, then obviously the carrier cannot excercise editorial content, and hence cannot be found liable for a lack of it.
Now, if you examine the case of the e-mail the message could have passed from transmitter to reciever without ever being unencryped, but at the bullitain board it must have been plain, in order to be freely distibuted.
Napster is designed for MP3 distribution. It's not their responsibility if the majority of the MP3s that get distributed are illegal.
Hey dude, uh... karma isn't just something you get by having your comments moderated. "What goes around, comes around". I wouldn't be so quick to judge others like you just did if I were you.
PS. All you proved is your lack of maturity...
(Yes, I know it was probably a troll)For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Napster was designed to help transmit MP3s. An MP3 file in and of it's self is _not_ illegal. There are several examples of when they are perfectly legal. If the artist explicitly said the MP3s are free, then it's fine. If you have the CD yourself, then it's legal too.
Napster is a way to share those legal files. How could they be doing something illegal? That's akin to saying that the file transfer feature of ICQ is illegal because people can transmit warez across it.
No, these two are not related at all. There is a long history of common carriers being immune to content liability. You cannot go after the telephone company because they accept a phone call to a bookie.
Napster is a different beast altogether. They are benefitting directly by supporting a file format that is widely, perhaps even predominately used for the purpose of copyright infringement. Such a benefit could well be recoverable by the infringed. This is no different from cases in the past where the movie and music industry have sued manufacturers of tape recorders and gotten fees attached to the sale of blank tapes and recorders as a means of recovering their losses.
The AC above just illustrated a point: Slashdot is a common carrier and not liable for content carried.
Now, moderate my post down.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
In fact, the Australian Supreme Court has cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings in a number of recent cases.
Generally, only rulings of higher courts are directly binding on courts under their jurisdiction. But the rulings of any court in a jurisdiction that has inherited the common law of England is (more or less) part of the body of common law and can be cited as precedent for a ruling.
In short, this case makes it easier to win similar cases anywhere in the U.K., Canada, Australia, the U.S. New Zealand, or any other common law jurisdiction; if it had ruled in the reverse, those cases would be harder to win.
Now I can put up all that porn. Wahoo
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
But the fraud is done by the person doing the "impersonation", not the service provider (bank, whatever). For instance, NNTP is normally non-authenticated; the server will accept any content in the headers. Some are a bit more paranoid than others, and force trace headers like NNTP-Posting-Host, NNTP-Posting-Date and the like, but there is a limit to the information the server can pick up.
If X.gc had been deployed, the issue would have been different, though... :-)
By the court's own arguments, they are wrong on one count: Prodigy's editorial policy removes them from comparisons to telephone providers. The phone company does not reserve the right to eavesdrop on my conversations unless they acquire a court order, so they naturally cannot be held liable for the content of my conversations. If Prodigy took a completely hands-off approach to the content they provide, I would agree that they are not liable for content.
However, Prodigy can (at their sole discretion and without due process of law) monitor and remove any message flowing through their system. This puts them into the position of editor just like a newspaper. This gives them oversite regulation, and as such they should be liable for all content.
Other Internet providers who truly act as merely an electronic conduit, and do not edit content, should not be held liable for anything flowing through that conduit, be it email or web page.
ALBANY - In its first major ruling on privacy and defamation in cyberspace, the Court of Appeals on Thursday held that an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is merely a conduit for information, as opposed to a publisher, and consequently is no more responsible than a telephone company for defamatory materials transmitted over its lines.
Also:
"We are unwilling to deny Prodigy the common-law qualified privilege accorded to telephone and telegraph companies," Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt
I don't think this will have much (if any) bearing on the case against Demon in the UK - afterall this is a US court case.
I think it will have useful implications where board owners have a disclaimer which clearly states they can edit messages if they are informed of a problem but perform no other checking. IIRC part of the problem with the Demon case was them not removing the messages when somone complained about them. Please note I am not saying the messages in the Demon case were libelous or not, just that part of the problem revolved around lack of action on their part after being informed of the problem.
Kithran
The question is: All topics must be banner? If a country alow to put kids porn on line... Why anyone could say nothing?
This kind of ruling was something I was expecting for a while. There's been a large rash of blatant privacy violations that have been working their way up the courts. This precedent is a good stepping stone for other privacy violations that are on the ballot...
Methinks the plaintiff took the wrong approach. Suing the imposter for something like wire fraud would seemingly make more sense; or if Prodigy had failed to act by removing the accounts involved upon showing that t'was an imposter, for negligence.
Unless the plaintiff, however, could claim that Prodigy could decide when the accounts were applied for that this was the intent... I would suppose that Prodigy requires addresses and credit card numbers, which should have permitted some cross-checking. At the very least, one person registering several accounts should set off flags, regardless of the contents of messages. When these names match a non-relation, this again should set off more flags, before a single message is posted. Perhaps negligence there...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Unlike the internet, though, newspapers have physical control and editing responsibility for what goes into newspapers /they/ print, distribute, and sell. In contrast, nobody owns or is responsible for internet content...it goes when and where it wants upon request. The service ISPs provide is accessibility, not content. It would be like the phone company being liable for conversations held on the phone.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The courts just needed to think about it. This was, however, the obvious answer. ISP are just the carriers.
This is how I look at it:
Saying they are responsible is like saying that Ma Bell is responsible for some flame on my answering machine. Um, NO!
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
So would AT&T, MCI or Ma Bell be liable for someone placing a phone call and impersonating someoone else? Same Thing.
I fail to see how this is relevant. How many people do you know who smoke tobacco in a bong?
"Given the extraordinarily rapid growth of this technology and its developments, it is plainly unwise to lurch prematurely into emerging issues, given a record that does not at all lend itself to their determination," Judge Rosenblatt wrote for the Court.
Doesn't this make it seem silly to have so many legislators trying to make laws in these areas, when the judges don't even haved a context to stand on? CDA? Millenium Digital Copyright? etc.
The Court held that Prodigy's power to exert editorial control does not alter its passive posture or render it a "publisher" of electronic bulletin board messages.
Yay! Now you can outright delete the shitty posts from the total assholes who insist on posting goddam fucking bullshit cusswords, without being held liable by the bloodsucking law-banging lawyers because you didn't delete that one special post that pushed a suicidal grandma over the edge.
Nice to see a ruling like this, gives me hope for some sane IP/copyright laws in the next century.
+&x
I wonder how this would apply to Slashdot? In Slashdot all of the messages are moderated. So is Slashdot more then just a conduit of information just like a telephone company is? Or are we doing more? While there is no real censorship, messages are never removed, by moderating a message down to -1 it is often not seen by the vast majority of slashdotters. Is this enough to make slashdot a publisher of information?
What about the articals posted on the main page? They are checked before they get posted. Does that mean that Slashdot could be liable?
You bring up an interesting point about liability for moderators. I wonder if it will become necisary to make moderators aware of the fact that *they* could be accused of censoring/obstructing/supressing information when they use the moderation tool?
Is the party that provides the tool (/.) liable or is the user of that tool liable? (there's a parelell to the gun issue here, but that would be pulling this debate offtopic...blah blah blah moderation doesn't kill comments, people kill comments..blah blah blah)
(I can see it now... 50k of text in an 8 point font with an I AGREE button down at the bottom just to moderate 5 articles)
Glad to hear that you are happy with Linux. Believe me, Linux users here in the US are just as unhappy with Windows as you are. Linux was started by Linus but modern Linux is the product of people from the US, Europe, and all around the globe cooperating with a common purpose. A minority of us are developers. Most of us are advocates or implementors. We need to cooperate, too. Us vs. Them will not help anyone. That said, I should say that if the situation were reversed, and the OS running 90%+ of our machines were produced in Europe, the general US public would surely have a much more negative view of the maker of the OS than they do of MS. Overall, though, I think that the views of the Linux advocates would be about the same.
BTW, this is hideously off-topic and it won't insult me one bit to be moderated accordingly.
-Steve Bergman
Oklahoma City, OK USA
at least two. therefore, you are interfering with my right to smoke black cabandasch from a purple hookah just because some freaks smoke wackey tobackey out of THEIR pipe.
What's even more interesting is, can MODERATORS be held liable for taking "Editoral responsibility". ?
Slashdot moderating is done by the readers, not the site owners. The moderation just conveys other readers views.
Just because something is offensive should it be bands? Kid porn should be banned becuase is hurts people. ISPs can't keep track of everything that is on thier systems. Some could have a newsgoup called alt.flowers but is could still have porn warze or what ever they want in it. For the sake of Freedom it's a good thing ISP aren't punished for not censoring thier users speech.
Do not wright in this space.
I understand that MP3s are not intrinsically illegal, but I would venture to say that 90% or more of MP3s are illegally obtained. The people behind Napster most probably know this. That was my argument. BTW, all my friends (but *cough* not me) use the file transfer feature of ICQ to transmit warez as well as MP3s.
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
No, and they never will. The feds dont care because they cant tax it. The real impact will come from the postal services new effort to portray snail mail as the only "real" secure way to communicate. They love all the ECHELON noise.
It is not the case that law suits got any money for the RIAA.
In fact, a suit against Sony by the movie industry for its Betamax video failed miserably.
Instead, it was a law. And regular audio tapes and video tapes are exempt. It's only media that can do lossless recording that count. I've seen it called the DAT tax, and there's an article about it on gnu.org somewhere.
And mp3 may be used 99 % for illegal copies, but courts (RIAA v. Diamond) have found that it does have a "significant non-infringing use" (that's legal-speak). Since napster could be used to distribute these legal mp3's (the Free Software Song, for example), it's got a "significant non-infringing use."
-Dave Turner, AC of convinience
IANAL, but I do know the law.
>The impression I got from my law class was that >if there is no direct precedence, the judge will >use the decision of other courts as precedence, >although he may give it less weight. A judge MAY use the decision of other courts, but it's purely discretionary. Keep in mind that New York is generally a defendant-friendly state. Other judges in other jurisdictions may have other ideas about policy-related issues such as this one.
It looks as though this case could be used in an argument against UNISYS's idea of "contributory infringement" of their LZW-compression patent.
UNISYS wants to hold web-site operators responsible for GIFs that appear on their site (search for "LZW" to see previous discussions here, or visit www.burnallgifs.org).
This case might apply when the only GIFs on a site are those that are passed through by an ad broker, leaving the ad broker and not the site operator responsible for paying the GIF tax, which is the way I think it ought to be.
WHOZ MY BITCH, JOO ARE ESP IF JOO IZ A KARMA HOEBAG
It's not really precedent, because there's no binding authority of the Court of Appeals of New York upon the rest of the States. However it can be persuasive to whatever court you're in front of. The trouble is, we have 50 different jurisdictions in the U.S., not counting the territories, and there is usually some sharp conflict between the States about particular rules of law. For instance, pretty much everything in Louisiana is inapplicable to the rest of the country :) Nevertheless, I think the New York decision is indicative of what we'll see elsewhere. I'd hate to see torts expanded to provide vicarious liability for mere channels of information. It's not like a newspaper, which has a chance to exclude certain content from ever hitting the press.
The real reason the internet is looked upon differently from telcos is that now any Joe/Jane Prole can put his/her opinion up for the world to see... try doing that with a voice call :-)
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
Now, it's clear that identity theft and abuse should not be allowed. Clearly Prodigy acted accordingly when it found out about the problem, and this is the procedure that should prevail.
/. articles about Australia and Britain surely don't give too much hope???
If we wanted to prevent the possibility to use a fake identity to happen, the measures needed would be quite farreaching. I don't claim to be an expert, but it seems that the only way to accomplish this would be to mandate everyone about sign in to the message boards, use some secure digital signature. This signature naturally would have to be recognised by some gov't organisation to make sure that the signature would correspond to an actual identity.
That, if anything, is a threat to our privacy, since if a government organ has 100% sure information about your identity, it could trace your tracks around the Net.
This case would not necesserily be that dramatic in "democracies" where free speech and freedom of opinion are quite guarded. However, this kind of system would be a god-send to any gov't that would for example guard its national security with jelousness. Previous
So, if this kind of regime would be implemented, the Right for Identity would have its meaning reversed to the Curse of Identity.
*clap* *clap*
It seems that finally a Judge believes in Personal Responsibility.
If *YOU* don't like a site or find something offensive, then sue the human who MADE the post/site. If you can't get modivated enough to sue, then stop whining.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
oh please,
Spare us all. There's no moderation, only filtering. Nothing ever gets deleted, and nobody is ever withheld from viewing crappy posts. Simply change your user settings, etc.
This case is all about people willing to stand up for there actions and facing the other person face to face.
Not to confront that person, but to have a dialog about *there* personal responsibility.
...Describing e-mail as "the day's evolutionary hybrid of traditional telephone line communications and regular postal service mail,"
Yeah, ok, it's an Appeals court, a state one. But apparently, in New York, the court is prepared to view email as similar enough to postal mail to get some of the same legal protections. Tampering with postal mail goes into federal jurisdiction, and carries some fines, maybe jailtime. Are they prepared to give those protections to email as well? Privacy may have just received a small boost.
Communication is only possible between equals
When you --the reader-- create an account at /. you are given an option to be a moderator. This makes it possible for a reader, moderator, and poster to be the same individual. Moderators are volunteers (aka. the public), NOT EMPLOYEES OF SLASHDOT.
Bearing this in mind, your "expert legal opinion" give me the creeps (and is grieviously flawed). Good thing it was free. I would hate to have paid money for it.
As far as your anonynimity is concerned, I could care less. In this particular case it costs you a great deal of credibility.
Sorry, but that is how I feel.
This is important because cases like this are generally decided by state law, not federal law. This case, for instance, was decided entirely on state law grounds. Read the decision. Unless Congress passes a law that displaces that state law, each state can and will do what it wants.
The Court of Appeals is the highest court in New York. (New York had to be different. The lowest courts in New York are the "Supreme Court.") It has enoromous influence across the nation, and the courts of other states, including their highest courts, will give weight to this decision when deciding other cases. Historically, because of Cardozo, the New York Court of Appeals has had an especially strong influence on tort law, the area of the law that covers cases like this.
Absent a decision like this from the California Supreme Court (size does matter) I can't think of a court I'd rather have the support of in this area.
it was demon, in a Scottish court, and IIRC they are not still fighting an appeal, because they did not appeal, because if the appeal court made the same decision it would set a solid precedent which they did not want, whereas without an appeal, the precedent would not be so secure.
The point, once ISPs filter one group, it implicitly states they are taking responsibility for filtering groups in general, whcih would mean they have to check 32000 groups, something that isnt feasible in practise never mind the moral difficulty of judging where to draw the line.
Oh, and the ISP would go out of business, because 95% of people on the net want pr0n, and wouldnt use an ISP with no pr0n ;)
I'm no lawyer, but I've been known to write a bit so I know a little about copyrights. In the scenario you describe, your really have no right to order the ISP to monitor the files of their clients, and it might even be illegal to listen to you (even if you were willing to pay for such a "monitoring service") as it would violate the privacy of the clients. All you can do is, once you are aware of specific violations of your copyright, compel them to remove the illegal material. Any ISP who begins working outside the common-carrier scope opens up an even bigger can of worms for themselves than if you decide to sue them should you discover a violation.
There are a couple points here that show that moderators are in no way liable for the content of posts.
/. or the Moderators for not removing the post and not moderating the post below the "standard" threshhold. /. takes a 'No Edit' policy, thus is not the publisher of the post, and is therefor not accountable. The Moderators are not paid employees. Moderation is not their job, or their responsibility. They can only be held accountable for the moderation they do, not the moderation they do NOT do. If the Moderators were paid for Moderating, they would be held accountable for both their action AND their in-action in their job. In this case however, only action could make them accountable for the action taken. If Moderators could be sued for not moderating, then every other user of /. could be sued too (every user has the option to be a moderator).
1. No post is ever deleted. All posts are available to all users at all times. Some users just prefer to filter their posts.
2. In many cases, there would be no clear way to determine which moderator or group of moderators to hold liable. For example, if a specific post slanders John Doe. That post is never moderated. John Doe then, attempts to sue either
I believe this concept could be expanded to deduce that moderators could not be held accountable for any action they may take as well, but I'm not going to attempt to go into that here.
"Anyone who can't laugh at himself is not taking life seriously enough." - Larry Wall
Just so you don't get too enthusiastic... this ruling doesn't apply in California, Texas, or any of the other states outside New York
The Court of Appeals has authority over all of the lower courts in New York (it's their highest court), but has only a "persuasive" value in courts in other states. In other words, you'll have to fight this fight in the 49 other states too...
The trouble is that governments don't want the Internet to be judged by the same rules as telephone and mail.
They view it as a threat to internal security because it promotes true democracy. So they will introduce legislation so that Judges don't have to think about common law rights and precedent.
If you don't believe me, come to Australia. People elsewhere think our government is backward because of some recent policies - wrong - they are way ahead of the game.
The Aus government has already figured out that the way to curb unbridled democracy is to have ISPs running scared over draconian content laws and then to have a politically controlled internal security organisation (read secret police) legally authorized to hack into said ISPs (or any one else) and to change data on their computers.
Note that ASIO (the security org) is not answerable to a judge to get a warrant but to a political master. So if an someone hosts unsavoury political commentry that the government sees as a threat to national security (ie it threatens the government of the day or some political or economice interest) they can legally compromise the providers computers.
Hardly likely. All moderators are doing is entering an opinion of the article. You can choose to ignore their opinion if you desire, by setting your filtering level appropriately. Opinions are not censorship.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
--Tom Geller
Founder, The Suespammers Project
Tom Geller
You bring up a very good point behind to many lawsuits today. Moreover, I think there is an even larger sociological force at work here. People that always view differences with strong duality and think of differences of opinion as solved via 'confrontation'. There is a serious lack of respect for skills that bring people together, skills that foster a solution, appreciation for the beauty of a ompromise.
It is good that they are finally figuring out that the maintainers of "data depositories" can not possibly be held liable for content stored on them. Think about it- holding prodigy responsible for allowing deflamatory content to be stored on their servers would be equivicable to suing a keyboard maker for letting you type it, a modem maker for letting you transmit it, and a printer maker for allowing you to print it.
I would hate to imagine:
"Blondes vs Lexmark" or
"Ugly Fat Chicks vs Logitech" on the docket.
Just my 2(cos(0)) cents.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
The way I see it, these are some of the major issues we are debating about:
1. Ownership (Copyright vs Authorship)
... most bullitain boards claim ownership of anything posted on them.
Most bulletin boards do say that they own the copyright on the posts, so you can't go and freely copy the bulletin board posts without their consent. But, BBSes won't (or can't) claim authorship of the posts. If they did, they would have to ensure that the content is non-offensive (which is a big headache for them). Copyright is (by default) owned by the author of original work, so the "Terms and Conditions" of the site probably say something like "you hereby relinquish all copyrights on the posts you make and instead transfer them to so-and-so.com". This protects them from getting sued over objectionable content, yet gives them power to sue you for copyright violation. Sort of like the editorials or opinion columns in magazines. The magazine will claim copyright, but say something like "these opinions don't necessarily reflect those of the official blah blah". But I do agree with you that claiming such things doesn't make BBS/website hosts invulnerable. They probably can be successfully sued with the help of a sympathetic jury.
2. Editing/Moderation (Power vs Obligation)
I think the power to edit doesn't necessarily constitute an obligation to do so. To take the oft repeated telephone example, surely the carriers have the power to edit, but they make it a policy not to, so they are really not liable for the content they carry. Again, I don't think this will insulate all. This will probably be decided on a case-by-case basis depending on whether the defendant is a publisher or a carrier, whether there was intent (for the objectionable material) or not, whether there was opportunity to edit or not (like someone pointed it out and the ISP still didn't do anything), etc.
3. Amount of editing
This seems to me the most ambiguous issue. ISPs can protect themselves to a large extent through Content Neutrality. But it is unclear how this applies to, say the newsgroups that they carry. Because (usually) ISPs don't moderate the newsgroups they carry, they are thus "content neutral" as far as each newsgroup is concerned. However, most ISPs don't carry a lot of the alt.some.really.objectionable.newsgroups, so can they be held liable if they let one of such newsgroups slip through (by accident or not)?
I am sure there are more and finer issues, but things are hazy as it is in my head, I better stop now.
Sreeram.
You said basically what I said, only sooner. :)
Should'a read more of the posts. :)
Fools seldom differ :)
Like you said, very few people speed, it really isn't that big of a deal. Also, speed limits vary in different places (even within different places with in 1 country) and are always changing. Obviously your engine needs to be able to go ove 65 if you want to be able to drive at 65 comfortably. In addition, osme cars do have speed lock outs (for instance, town cars lockout at 85). 99% of people do not speed excessivily. 99% of people who use napster use it to pirate. All in all, the anology is pretty weak.
That might have been the argument, but we all know that is not the case. My friends use their rio for legitimate music. Quite a few of them in fact. the RIO has ligitimate uses. I would estimate over 50% of rio users use it legitmately. On the other hand, Napster's users use it 99% of the time for illegal purposes. We all know that.
I think that there should be a more definitive law on this subject. Personally I believe that ISPs should only allow one account per customers so this sort of thing couldn't happen. Why would you need more than one account? I think ISPs should be held responsible if someone pretends to be someone else through their service, especially if threats of this nature are made. But, I think that information passing through the ISP should not be held responsible by the ISP. Imposters are one thing as you can find out if you have one person on more than one account with a simple Perl script, but if a child pornographer used Prodigy there is no way they could know unless they stumbled upon one of his sites (what would they be doing there anyways) or constantly monitored items in his account (I see this as a breach of privacy). Well, I don't know how to end this without lines upon lines of nothing so I think I'll end rather abr...
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit.
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit.
jdube is who I am
--
Dave Aiello
-- Dave Aiello
The point is, we don't know this. How many studies can you point to that show the number of illegal mp3 downloads as compared to the number of legal ones? None, it's untraceable, and as long as a piece of software, or just about any invention, has a legitimate use it's just about impossible to 'ban' it for lack of a better word. Just look at guns...
I guess one of the reasons that this has come up with respect to those sites is that losses are sometimes more immediate and quantifyable.
--
Dave Aiello
-- Dave Aiello
This is a fair ruling.
Are owners of shopping malls held responsible if people perform illegal activities within them?
This is a topic that the current generation will debate forever, until computers are integrated so tightly into our society that it is no longer an issue.
The issue here, and also in a lot of other stories that appear here, is that of whether real-life ethics and laws should apply to this "electronic world" that has been created following the rapid spread of networks, in particular, the Internet.
This Prodigy ruling, as well as many others in the same vein as it, will continue to happen.
Scott182
Great Minds Think Alike :)
I thought this suit was pretty tacky - when the forged email and postings were brought to Prodigy's attention, they did a good job of responding quickly and deleting them. It was clearly not their negligence, and especially after cases like Cubby vs. Compuserve, which also found the ISP not liable, this was a good solid decision by the judge.
:-)
While the US courts did the right thing in this case (yay!), one implication of the Internet going everywhere on the planet is that almost anything you post can upset someone, somewhere, in a jurisdiction you'd rather not travel to for a trial. One famous case involved an Australian saying bad things about a Brit, who sued for defamation in a British court and won against the respondent, who mailed in a response but didn't show in person for a defense. British libel laws seem biased toward the plaintiff, at least compared to US laws, and many jurisdictions without strong traditions of press freedom will also rule against ISPs (at least unless the ISP has a deal with the local telco monopoly.)
Some countries care about defaming their citizens, at least prominent citizens. Some governments ban defaming the government or government officials ("The King is a fink!"). Some governments ban propagating unapproved religions (non-Islam in many Islamic countries, Scientology in Germany, Fulan Gong in China, Jehovah's Witnesses almost everywhere, lots of things in Singapore.) Some governments ban pictures of women without veils on their faces - your web site could cause you big trouble in Afghanistan, next time you're there. Some governments don't like capitalist activities unless you pay them a
Fortunately, most governments don't care about libel against non-citizens, and most governments don't enforce court judgements against their citizens by other governments for things that aren't illegal at home. But states in the US are pretty cooperative with each other - a New York court may very well hear a defamation suit against a Californian who doesn't want to take the time and money to show up.
On the other hand, you can avoid much of this problem by using internet privacy technologies,
like freedom.net, which make it more trouble to track you down and sue you than to respond appropriately, e.g. by flaming back at you on the Internet, or setting up a web page explaining why you're an lying loser and scribbling your pages using Third Voice, or by ignoring you if that's a better approach.
Oh, by the way, all those stupid things allegedly posted by billstewart, that wasn't me, that was somebody else
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I understand that MP3s are not intrinsically illegal, but I would venture to say that 90% or more of MP3s are illegally obtained. The people behind Napster most probably know this. That was my argument. BTW, all my friends (but *cough* not me) use the file transfer feature of ICQ to transmit warez as well as MP3s.
And this was probably the same argument the RIAA used to try and nuke Diamond for the Rio... and lost, becuase you *can* use the Rio legally, it's not illegal. Same with Napster - you can use it legally, and it was designed to be used legally - just because 90% of the people are going to use it illegally doesn't mean that the creators of it are responsible for that usage.
Whether or not you agree with that is another story.
I believe that a very strong argument could be made for 'suppressed' information if the default setting on the 'Threshhold' was 0 or higher.
What do you mean "if the default setting...was 0 or higher"? The default threshold is 0.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Indeed. It's much better that they take a long time getting around to the issue than that they make a mistake early, since once they've ruled on something the first time they've set a precedent! Once a precedent is set, correcting the error becomes more difficult. Better they take their time and make the right decision the first time around. I'm not sure if they would have made this same decision 5 years ago when ISPs weren't a dime a dozen. Not understanding the revolution that was coming, they may have insisted ISPs take editorial control over what "they publish" or some such nonsense.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I'd guess that the past editing would only create a problem if one of those past posts in the archives were deemed to be illegal. Since slashdot currently does not edit the contents of its posts, it probably isn't liable for them. Of course, you never know...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I remember way back when, AOL was sued by the courts in some state (I think it was Virginia) because there was some illegal content uploaded to a server and the reason they were being sued by the state was because the server was located there. Now if someone uploads illegal pornography or warez the isp wont get in trouble (now people can upload even more illegal pornography and warez and the isp wont give a damn cause they wont get in trouble for it). Oh well...
Maybe we should have a law that all print shops must ID all their customers and maintain a register containing the customer's identity and a sample of the item printed. Next, we can mandate the registration of all typewriters and photocopy machines with the government.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Oh give me a fucking break. I didn't say they should ban it. But we all know from experience that no one 'trades' freely distributable mp3's. If napster even as so much cared about stopping piracy they could at least check id3 tags against a database of copyrighted music and make sure that it wasn't illegal before allowing the transfer. There is a reason they don't. There is a reason they also wouldn't do that for even a day to try and proove that most people use it for legitimate purposes. Legally, I think it will be hard for the RIAA to win the case. But ethically, they should. Napsters sole purpose is to simplify illegal activities. Even if you don't have a consiounces and use it, you should at least be able to admit to that.
This case bears on a question that really needs to be addressed: protection against identity theft online. We don't have a good way that you can, when you want to, authenticate that you're you when you're sending mail or posting. The public-key systems to do this exist, but aren't widely enough used that people notice when someone isn't using them. This has been a serious problem on USENET. Slashdot gets around this by creating psuedo-identities and protecting them, but that's only useful within a single system. One of the big players in mail needs to get behind certificates to make this work.
Still, it makes some situations unassailable by the legal process. I'm thinking of cases with gigabucks to tie up courts while technological changes render the matter moot.
It's a good thing there's no censorship here.
Once you "edit" comments, you take over liability for the content of that article. /. the same as editing content?
Is the moderatrion system currently in use here on slashdot
Do Moderators have "Editoral Control"?
From the article:
Describing e-mail as "the day's evolutionary hybrid of traditional telephone line communications and regular postal service mail," the Court noted that while commercial on-line services like Prodigy transmit electronic mail, they do not exercise any editorial control. It evaluated Mr. Lunney's claim in the context of existing tort precedents, and found that "these settled doctrines accommodate the technology comfortably."
I am not sure about the outcome of the case. Altern was down for quite a while, but is now back up. You now must provide an email address (that is confirmed) to open an account. There was a petition, and as the case was posted on Slashdot, quite a few people signed it. I do remember the ISP owner (it's a one-person operation, on a Linux server BTW) thanking everyone for the support.
Think about how cool that defamatory content would be in a Beowulf cluster...
However, how much effect does this have for those unfortunate ISPS in the UK? (J/K) I haven't kept track, but The-ISP-I-Can't-Remember-the-Name-of that removed an article from its news spool for being libellous is still fighting its appeal IIRC, is there a precedent for using an example from an American court in British ones? I don't think so, but who knows IANAM.
This has some very good implications, although as far as I can see this only really applies to Boards where the owners merely reserve the right to edit and email, only a brain dead judge wouldn't apply this to usenet.
However, does this apply to webpages? I tend to think the ISP's would be free from liability for evil things on a page, but I don't see that spelled out in this ruling.
"Tax preparation software eliminates errors your[SIC] may make...." From IRS home page.
Oops didn't mean to post an empty comment, IE sucks... I guess all it takes is to slip and press tab and a space bar by accident, oh well..
What I meant to say was, I don't understand what took so long for this decision to get made. It's amazing how people lose any form of common sense when they see the word computer. Maybe I'm just dense, but I don't see any real difference between communication sent over an ip based network and communication sent over any other form of network.
How many people would think of making AT&T liable for information sent over phone lines? When's the last time someone sued the US Postal office for getting an obscene or offensive piece of mail? But computer networks, oh no, we need to take this one to court... I'm glad the decision came down this way, but it's retarded to think that it had to go to court.
My next question is how this will affect companies being liable for employee e-mail and network traffic. In a sense, a corporation is acting as an ISP for their employees. Does this mean that they can't get sued for harassing e-mail messages sent over their corporate network?
I do not know the proper way to say these things in lawyer-speak, so perhaps someone else more knowledgeable in the subject can help...
Napster is currently named in a law suit filed by the RIAA in regards to illegal MP3 distribution. Perhaps this case can be overturned with the help of this new ruling? Of course, Napster isn't a common carrier, but it isn't providing the information, either. It is only providing a means for people to exchange information ... just like ISPs.
I'll stick you Yankee rifle in your Yankee ass! .fi ftp-sites from your bookmarks, fuckface!!!!
If you don't like us, remove all your 1000's
In the last half of 1998, We had a similar case. Here is an extract that is available on the IIA (Internet Industry Association)
In summary, the Australian Performing Rights Association took OzEmail to court because OzEmail refused to pay for a license fee to APRA, at the rate of $1 per subscriber per annum, for allowing the downloading of music over the Internet. APRA represents the interest of artists and is responsible for the collection and distribution of royalties to them for 'performances' of their works. They hold that an ISP is allowing the transmission of a work and therefore should pay a license fee for such.
This case was settled out of court with Ozemail not accepting liability. Here is the settlement.
APRA agreed to cease the action in the Federal Court on the following terms:
A payment by OzEmail on behalf of the industry to be made on 30 June 1998. Each party agreed to meet their own costs
There was no admission of liability by OzEmail Limited
APRA would not sue any other ISP in Australia, which joins in the settlement agreement.
OzEmail, the Internet Industry Association and APRA would work together to advise the government on the appropriate form of new legislation covering their copyright which recognises that those who make available content through the Internet are responsible for the copyright liability of any material they make available. The parties agree that it be clearly enshrined in the legislation that ISPs are not liable for material they host or which passes through their services.
OzEmail makes available on a regular basis information regarding the hosting of sound files, which may assist APRA, with due regard to the privacy of customers and obligations under the IIA Code and the Telecommunications Act. OzEmail will use their best endeavours to have other IIA members provide information to assist APRA in protecting the intellectual property of their members.
OzEmail's terms and conditions reflect the responsibility of content providers to ensure they do not make available material for which they do not have authorisation from the copyright holder.
Should no legislation be enacted by 30 June 1999 the parties agree to renegotiate in good faith
The full offer to Australian ISP's is at http://www.iia.net.au/news/apra.html
The MyTh - I am a figment of the Imagination - [Im Probably even not here]
What? Did you think court proceedings are: "Hey Mister Judge sir, here's a precedent showing ISPs are not liable for content." "Oh! Ok then, case dismissed!" If you believe this is how it works, I'd like to talk to you about some beach front property in FL.
This ruling changes nothing for the mom&pop ISP.
The impression I got from my law class was that if there is no direct precedence, the judge will use the decision of other courts as precedence, although he may give it less weight.
For example, if there is no precedence for a case in Canada, the judge will look for similar cases in the UK or the rest of Commonwealth, and if there isn't any there may even consider precedents from US jurisdictions.
Bryan
Lets say I am a hypothetical trade organization that represents painters. A file format now lets people steal images created by my clients and pass them around to friends. I decide to send out blanket letters to ISP's telling them they must police their networks and get rid of any infringing files, or face getting hauled into court. My letter, however, cites no specific examples of wrong doing on their network. Is the ISP in any greater legal peril in the future if they don't scour their network looking for illegal reproductions of paintings? How specific does notification need to be before an ISP stops merely acting as a "conduit". Any ideas?
Oh grits guy, how we've missed you.
But can you quite possibly pour something OTHER than hot grits down your pants? If not, WHY hot grits? Why not hot oatmeal, or hot mashed potatos? I think hot mashed potatos would feel better than grits anyway, going down one's pants.
Excuse me, but how in the world would Prodigy "know" the ID registrations were "impersonations"???
I know for a fact that there is a child on the other side of the US with the same first and last name as me. He happens to be my nephew! There is, of course a difference in our middle names (thankfully!).
But say, for example, I marry a woman who already has a child from a previous marriage. The boy's name is Johnathon B. Doe, and mine is Billy B. Bogus. Now, if I open an account for my stepson in his name, then some *other* John B. Doe decides to sue the ISP for allowing me to register an account in *HIS* name. You're stating that this is a "Good Thing(tm)"???
I beg to differ! The fact that someone opened an account in a name other than there own is NOT a red flag to then deny the registration!
- Game Over! - Do You Want To Play Again? -
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Actually since the passing of thd CDA (Communications Decency Act) an ISP cannot be found liable for the content passed through its lines. Take a look at CDA section 230 for more information on why.
When it comes to the editing of postings a publisher of a web site can edit the postings for the better of the community, like editing out curses etc.
Under CDA 230 Section (c), it is stated that for any "good samaritan", defined as one who is "blocking and screening offensive material", that "no provider of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher" of "any information provided by another information content provider".
Thus by editing the content they are not responsible for it.
Please remember the CDA was overturned by the Supreme Court for only the following parts:
The Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. 223(a)-(h) 1, 2, 14
Now what I find interesting is that companies like Yahoo and GeoCities have taken ownership, direct ownership by the use of a legal click wrap statement where the publisher gives up the right of ownership. Does this supercede the CDA since they are now potentially editing for more the moral decency? Since they own the information can they be sued directly for slander?
-- I wish more people would site law and fact rather then opinion.
The court points out that it has not touched on federal law. It may be a bit persuasive on how to deal with these issues in such cases, but this case should not be read as having any effect on cases in federal law. It has none. Even if it had come up in the case, it would be a federal question, for determination by the federal courts.
I been hanging on the ISP groups for awhile and the "Common Carrier" standard / defence is talked about alot.
The problem is with the Internet there are 4 main functions that an ISP does.
Connection: This function is most like good old MAMA BELL. You ask to be "connected" to some point and you are "connected". Read a web page, down load a file, down load email... all the same function "connect" me to that server and transport the results back. -- Common Carrier covers this.
Store for Delievry: This function is most like the Post Office. You ask a server "do you have have some thing for me". Email, IRC can be viewed with this function. - Common Carrier covers this, to a point... Harrasing Mail can be reported, some times mail Farud and the Authority can step in and request help by the ISP.
Forward to for Delievry: As above... USPS. Read here List Groups, Email, IRC.
Store to give to another who wants it: This can be viewed as a Book Store. USENET, WEB Hosting. Here is where the problems begins... a Book Store is NOT a "Common Carrier". They choose what want in the store that brings the most profit into the business.
The Local Community controls the standards... Porn, Hate Groups, Gay/Lesbian, what ever. This is problem for an ISP. Most Communities and People are happy when a problem is found and the ISP takes action. Removal of Kiddy Porn, WAREZ site, what ever. Authorities tell the ISP and it is done. If not... they lose the machines, business, and freedom... for being part of the problem. Like use the words: Trafficer in Kiddy Porn -- that is crime.
YES, this is centorship. We accept it. It matches to our standards...
Now here is the Question:
Can a book store (website) can be viewed in the common carrier standard?
Now answer these:
Does that mean the corner 7-11 can sell kiddy porn?
if yes, WHY
if no, WHY
What does that mean for a local community?
Where is the line drawn?
This is the fine line. Think hard.
If they do not filter the content, they are treated merely as a carrier.
This was a decision local to New York, not a binding precedent on the rest of the country. Until we see a Supreme Court decision about this, there will be no case law binding on the entire US, just on the particular district in which the decision was made.
Granted, New York has a sizable chunk of people. But it won't affect the rest of us for now.
You're missing the point of the lawsuit. The defendant wanted lots and lots of money. The imposter (who is not named in the article, and perhaps is still unknown) doesn't have lots and lots of money. Prodigy does. It would make more sense to sue the person who was responsible if your aim in filing suit was retributive, or even preventative (see my earlier comments in a different story on punitive, preventative, and rehabilatative punishments), but clearly, the plaintiff just thought this would be a good way to make a shitload of money.
In case you hadn't noticed, that's the motivation behind a lot of tort suits, and it's one of the reasons that the court system is overflowing with them.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
...hence my choice of subject line.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Just think about if the telco was screening all phone calls to make sure that "bad" content wasn't on their network. There would be a loss of privacy. Plus I guess the phone bill would have to go up considerably to conver the cost of all that monitoring (just as if an ISP had to hire staff to monitor content on their servers).
I'm glad the courts ruled the way they did in this case.
-Michael [Remove two parts of address to mail me]
In my expert legal opinion, offered here free of charge, Slashdot, together with the moderators, share complete responsibility for the contents of these forums. If I attempted to explain why I must remain anonymous, I face loosing that anonymity. I hope you understand.
it seems to me that the writer of this post was not just trying to make another stupid troll post. he was trying to make a couple points. first, he was complaining about all of the various beowulf cluster/grits in my pants/naked and petrified/linux rulez/micro$oft suxxors/opensource trolls that keep popping up. second, he was complaining about the karma sluts, who post only to gain more karma points, as if they were a commodity. third, he was complaining about the people who post without reading the article, or post very simple messages like "i need to get one of these" or "i agree with the article." i tried to make the same point in an earlier comment on the Guide to Slashdot story.
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. -- Voltaire
Not unless you litigate it in New York State...
i bet rob's sphincter just relaxed significantly.
The phrase is "common carrier." The phone company doesn't filter your calls, even to the 1-900-PERVERT numbers because they'd then have to go to court to explain why they didn't block other offensive content.
ISPs face the same dilemna. They don't want to have approve all content ("Hey Marv, do you think these teenagers are legal?") and controlling only some content leaves them open to charges that anything not disapproved must have been approved.
One would expect that content emanating from a certain ISP account would come from the owner of that account, the person who registered for it.
Should we allow people to get a driver's licence in somebody else's name? What about a bank account? That would constitute fraud. One should at least have proof that the name isn't entirely false. You would be able to present evidence that this hypothetical stepson does exist as named, and is related to you. This 'other John B Doe' would have no reason to sue, because the account legitimately belongs to someone who just happens to share the same name.
According to the article; "Mr. Lunney, through his father, sued Prodigy contending that the company negligently allowed accounts to be opened in his name. He sought damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. " Now, should it be perfectly legal to *impersonate* someone online? This Lunney dude had the right to contend against Prodigy opening the accounts in his name. Yes, ISPs are only carriers, but they should implement stronger checks to prevent this kind of harrasment. IMHO, ISPs should be held liable for something such as a web site containing illegal content. They should also be liable for impersonation/fraud, which is what happened here. They should *not* be liable for the content of message boards, email, and other such temporary content or public forums, which is also what happened. Yadda, yadda.
given the amount of flaming here, if defamatory material was blamed on website owners, taco and hemos would be serving double life!
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
So was this a case of targetting deeper pockets
You also wrote:
Methinks the plaintiff took the wrong approach.
If you're aware that the plaintiff was trying to make money, in what way do you feel their approach was "wrong"? Was it morally wrong? Was it ethically wrong? Was it legally wrong? Or was it simply explotative?
I think you'd have a hard time arguing that their approach was either legally wrong (it's clearly allowed by law.) And, while it may be argued that the courts are designed to uphold our moral standards, I think the current rash of tort suits similar to this one implies that our society does not disapprove of this type of behavior (talk-radio DJ's excepted.) Finally, there are perhaps ethical questions, but I think you would have a hard time arguing that the courts are supposed to uphold our ethical values.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
Ever since the "haxors guid to /." was posted here I've noticed a proliferation of the types of posts described in said document. /. have not only on itelf but on other news articles.
Granted such posts were around before but I think there are more of them.
It would be interesting to see what effect other joke articles on
Imagine as annoying as these posts are here, if I so it as a comment on a more mainstream publication I'd get a bit of a laugh out of it.