From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [news.admin.policy]  Re: Groups used to distribute illegal material
Originator: daemon@eff.org
Organization: EFF mail-news gateway
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 14:49:38 GMT


Newsgroups: news.admin.policy
From: styri@hal.nta.no (Haakon Styri)
Subject:  Re: Groups used to distribute illegal material
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 19:51:06 GMT

In article <ward1.713735730@husc8>, Lester Ward writes:
>
> [stuff deleted, but les states that he's making comments on the legal issue]
>
> o Juristiction: A post from Germany shows up in the USA.  It is illegal in
> the USA, but not in Germany.  Is the poster breaking the law?  There are
> probably not too many precidents for this (its not that likely), but I hope
> the point is clear.  Suppose the post is illegal in both countries; how is
> the poster prosecuted? etc.

I remember that the news admin at mcvax (?) cut off some groups from the
news-feed from the US to Europe some 8 or 9 years ago because too many of
the postings could be illegal in a few countries that got it's feed from
the mcvax. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Dunno what happened later.

I think it's ok to view the net as a common carrier, but laws differ
from country to country. In Norway, I can legally view any public TV
broadcast I receive with my own sattelite dish. If I want to distribute
the same signal to other people through a cable there are stricter
rules. (In the same manner, I could legally import porn for private use
that would be illegal to import for sale in Norway. This law's reviewed
at present I believe.)

I think the news is in a special position due toat least two different facts.
1) The amount of information makes it impossible to screen the news.
2) The exchange if information between two nodes is agreed and can be
   controlled to some extent by the `newsgroup' and the `distribution'
   fields. But, none of these fields are useful when it comes to sort
   out any kind of `illegal' traffic.

There was some fuzz last year when a BBS carried some stuff from the
alt.pyrotechnics group. The real trouble started, however, when some
BBS got a few faked porn pics of members of the royal family. The sys
op removed the files, and the Crown did not press charges. (The files
from the alt.pyrotechnics group were not removed if my memory serves me
right.)

A poster may break the law in another country, but if he did
restrict distribution - is he/she the responsible, or should the
news admin that ignored the distribution field get the blame.
A nice problem, but do we really know who posted the article, and
can we trust the `path' information to be correct. No, we cannot.

Guess I'm in no danger as long as I'm not screening the news. Running
an archive server is a bit more tricky if I don't want to give unknown
people both read and write access to the file system. Guess I can use
the old "see no evil, hear no evil, day no evil" trick, but: Is it the
right thing to do?

Anyway, thanks to Jurgen Botz for starting this thread. He, and other
people should probably have a look at some of the threads going on
the misc.legal and misc.legal.computing groups. I think it's a case
for discussing the copyright problem without screaming "censorship"
and "bible-thumper" all over the place. Some people are afraid of
knowledge because having that knowledge may require that they are
more responsible for their actions (or lack of actions). They are
free to include the thread in their KILL file.

---
Haakon Styri
Norwegian Telecom Research

Std. diclaimer applies    -    I speak for myself and only myself.
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk