Politech mailing list archives
FC: Internet trade association responds to anti-Usenet porn post
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 19:09:01 -0500
It seems to me that a crucial point is absent from this discussion: Not all posts in even an alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* newsgroup are going to be what you might expect. Some will be discussion of photos, some will be "please post," some will be irate anti-pornsters complaining, some will be the newsgroup regulars fighting back, some will be trolls, some will be spam, etc.
Certainly some of the above discussion is protected by the First Amendment, so conceding that an entire newsgroup is filled with illegal material concedes too much. The Scientologists, for instance, would surely claim that all discussion in alt.religion.scientology is illicit, when only a minority of messages (arguably) violate copyright law.
If ISPs are going to be in the business of deleting stuff from Usenet -- a hopeless task anyway -- they may as well demand specific message IDs of allegedly unlawful material.
-Declan ********** From: "Dave McClure" <dmcclure () usiia org> To: <declan () well com> Subject: RE: Anti-porn group's take on ISP Usenet prosecution in New York Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 16:05:50 -0500 Message-ID: <001101c09925$68f8cf30$0ace94cd@dave> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Declan: USIIA has, since 1995, warned our member ISPs of the dangers posed by the child-porn-oriented newsgroups, particularly from prosecutors who do not know the law and are looking for a quick, cheap victory. This case appears to follow the precedent set by the LA Vice Squad in 1996. LAVS began to arrest online service providers on charges of child porn (in those days, it was for carrying on a BBS photos of porn star Tracy Lords when she was 15. . .as if you could tell her age from the photo or something). The procedure was to pull the guy into a room and threaten to hold a news conference if he did not plead guilty to a misdemeanor. In the news conference, he would be labeled a pedophile and his career/life ruined. The same press confeerence would be held if the guy got an attorney and attempted to fight the charge. After all, they said, it was just a misdemeanor. . .kind of like a traffic ticket. The poor guy didn't realize until afterward that he'd be a Know Sexual Offender for the rest of his life. . . To our knowledge, three such plea bargains were made before we were able to intercept the process with the LAPD. Knowing that ISPs make easy targets -- you don't have to spend any time or money looking for the real culprits -- we supported the passage of Section 509 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which states: (1) TREATMENT OF PUBLISHER OR SPEAKER- No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. The clause was specifically passed by the Congress in an effort to curb the abuse of ISPs by overly-zealous prosecutors and judges. On the other hand, we're no fans of kiddie porn, and have encouraged ISPs to also use the "Good Samartican" clause of Section 509 to remove access to such newsgroups. We have also frequently warned that an ISP that wished to carry the offending newsgroups -- particularly after they have been notified of the content of the newsgroup by the authorities -- could be held liable under 47 USC Section 233 (a)(2). Remember, the Supreme Court only struck down a narrow definitional clause of the Communications Decency Act, not the whole law. We don't tell our member ISPs that they can't carry any particular newsgroups (that is a decision each ISP needs to make in consultation with legal counsel), but we do tell them to be prepared if they do so to defend that decision in court. We're pleased to note that the vast majority of our ISP members have elected to remove access to newsgroups that carry or promote child pornography. We are sorry to see that the new york case will set a precedent that could launch another wave of anti-ISP legal actions. Regards, Dave McClure US Internet Industry Association ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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- FC: Internet trade association responds to anti-Usenet porn post Declan McCullagh (Feb 17)