Hold on to your news servers

Mon Nov 16 16:45:21 UTC 1998

[I think we've pretty much exhausted the 2cc worth of operational
relevance that this had; this will be my last post to nanog on the
subject.]

In the immortal words of Karl Denninger (karl at Denninger.Net):
> 
> Uh, no.  Usenet is NOT a carrier service.  Its just not.  

Well, so you've been asserting for many years now.  (I seem to recall first
having this argument with you on news.admin.misc circa 1993.)  My under-
standing of the case law surrounding the issue suggests that it's a bit 
less cut and dried than that, but YMMV.

> 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.

Funny thing that -- I would actually have pointed to the Vacco prosecutions
as a primary example of why putting one's trust in CleanNews as a legal
umbrella might not be the best idea.  From all accounts, the two ISPs
Vacco shut down in New York were making all of the usual efforts to 
cooperate in good faith with Vacco's office.  Unfortunately for them, it
was an election year and Vacco was in a tight (indeed, still undecided)
race, so he decided to play the "Internet child porn scare" card
and raided them anyways: http://www.buffnet.net/ag/

Moral: acting in "good faith" is...an act of faith.  It's no substitute
for concrete legal protections.

[Full disclosure: I am a resident of New York State with a profound
and repeatedly stated dislike for Vacco.  The man is scum, and you can
quote me on that.]

> 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.

Agreed and emphasized.

-n

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"Sure, the left would love to have a Christian Coalition.  The tiny problem is
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