Legal Issues on Blackholeing (was AGIS signing up New Spamme

Mon Nov 17 10:11:12 UTC 1997

> > If you decide to start filtering out SPAM by blocking it from the source,
> > do you end up becoming a content provider because you're controlling what
> > your customers have access to?  If that is the case, what legal
> > implications arise ...
> 
> I was wondering if anyone was going to trip to this... Full credit, Mr. Shaw!
> 

A recent ruling would seem to be in the ISPs favor:
http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971114/wired/stories/cda_1.html

To sum it up:
part of the CDA indicates that "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"

This woulds seem to indicate that an  ISP can not be LEGALLY 
held accountable for the content published by a customer. (although 
in the case of UBE, I think the means, more so than the message, is 
the issue.) I don't think the issue of filtering comes into this at 
all.

Perhaps if there was some way to filter based on usage instead of 
content, the legal issues would be a little clearer, as one could 
block off  'offenders'  based on thier abuse of your usage policy.

Comments?

Paul Flores
Williams Communication Group