What is lawful content? [was VZ...]

Patrick W. Gilmore patrick at ianai.net
Fri Feb 27 22:23:44 UTC 2015


I am not a lawyer (in fact, I Am Not An Isp), but my understanding is this is pretty well settled.

And it is not even weird or esoteric. If the content on the site is against the law in the jurisdiction in question, it is not legal (duh). Otherwise, yes it is, and no ISP gets to decide whether you can see it or not.

Things like KP are obvious. Things like "adult" content here in the US are, for better or worse, also obvious (legal, in case you were wondering).

Things like gambling are the question, as that changes per location.


A better question is: Can ISPs sell things like "filtering" services for a fee? Blocking is disallowed. But that is blocking by the ISP. Affirmative requests from the end user to block things are probably OK. But ... has anyone seen the actual rules?

-- 
TTFN,
patrick

> On Feb 27, 2015, at 16:46 , Livingood, Jason <Jason_Livingood at cable.comcast.com> wrote:
> 
> Iąm not sure who gets to definitively answer the question (I would guess
> that case law will develop around it but IANAL), but this sort of caveat
> has been in the Open Internet rules for awhile. In general it means ISPs
> canąt block stuff like Facebook but have latitude to do stuff like block a
> site/IP address that may be the source of an attack, etc.
> 
> 
> - Jason
> 
> On 2/27/15, 2:24 PM, "Bruce H McIntosh" <bhm at ufl.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> On 2015-02-27 14:14, Jim Richardson wrote:
>>> What's a "lawful" web site?
>>> 
>> Now *there* is a $64,000 question.  Even more interesting is, "Who gets
>> to decide day to day the answer to that question?" :)




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