Hold on to your news servers

Mon Nov 16 01:50:42 UTC 1998

On Sun, Nov 15, 1998 at 05:15:05PM -0500, Nathan J. Mehl wrote:
> 
> If there is any actual operational relevance to this discussion, it is
> this: does accepting a CleanNews feed actually, as Karl suggest, provide
> any legal protection to the subscriber site when dealing with accusations
> of transiting illegal or copyrighted material?  I strongly suspect that
> the answer is "Not even slightly", and urge that ISP news administrators
> talk long and hard with their corporate counsel before implementing this.
> It is possible, depending on whether you present yourself as a carrier
> service, that this could even increase your liability.  

Uh, no.  Usenet is NOT a carrier service.  Its just not.  You can try to
claim that it is, but I suspect that we'll find out shortly whether there is
any chance in hell of that succeeding - coming out of New York State.

One key when talking to lawyers, though, is to tell them the truth about
what you do and what you need to do in order to implement something.  Its
very easy to get your shorts in a knot if you play coy with your counsel.

--
-- 
Karl Denninger (karl at denninger.net) http://www.mcs.net/~karl
I ain't even *authorized* to speak for anyone other than myself, so give
up now on trying to associate my words with any particular organization.