🚀 go-pugleaf

A few questions:

On Fri, 18 Nov 1994, David Smith wrote:

<stuff deleted>
>       A COUPLE OF REASONS WHY THESE WORKSHOPS ARE NECESSARY
> 
> The Amateur Action BBS -- a BBS in California is charged and
> convicted with violating the community standards and obscenity
> statutes in Tennessee federal court.  The sysops face sentencing
> that totals 110 years in jail.
> 
> Tony Davis buys an adult CD-Rom out of the back of a nationally
> distributed magazine and resells copies to his Oklahoma City
> users.  Hundreds, maybe even thousands of copies of this CD-Rom
> have been sold, yet the police bust down his door (with the
> evening news cameraman just two steps behind). A jury convicts
> Tony of violating obscenity statutes and sentence him to a total
> of 35 years in jail.
> 
> Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v George Frena.  Playboy sues George
> Frena in civil court for distributing .gif files of copyrighted
> Playboy models, even though his users were uploading and
> downloading images without his knowledge. It doesn't matter
> whether the sysop knew or not, the court says, and awards Playboy
> $110,000 in damages.  [George Frena was also arrested last week
> for criminal obscenity charges in Florida criminal court].
> 
> Texas BBS systems are routinely raided.  Charges of software
> piracy brought down the Alpha 2010 BBS in McAllen, the User-to-
> User BBS in Coppell, and the Agents of Fortune in Vidor.
> Operation Longarm netted at least two bulletin board systems for
> child pornography.  These are just the systems we know about, as
> law enforcement officials work freely behind a "wall of silence"
> that prevents monitoring of their efforts.
> 
> Because one of their users is accused of posting a defamatory
> message on one of their message bases, Prodigy has just been
> slapped with a $100 million dollar libel lawsuit. That as owner
> and moderator of the message base, Prodigy is being held
> accountable for the actions of their users.
*more stuff deleted*

After reading this I got so upset, I promptly deposited my lunch in the 
closest SEMATECH men's room. I truly cannot comprehend why the any of the 
above has even happened...Has the postmaster in Austin ever been jailed 
because of "child pornography" found in a persons private mailbox? Why 
hasn't the Postmaster General been locked away for all the copyrighted, 
subversive, and pornographic materials trafficked through the snail mail 
system? 

Why hasn't AT&T, Sprint, or whoever owned the lines that these materials 
were also transferred on been sued? As well as the sattelite transponders 
owners? Weren't these "heinous" materials at least briefly stored in 
their systems as well?

Apparently only some providers of the New Pony Express are held liable 
for the mail they carry...and the lowliest of Messengers are being 
coerced into violating rights of privacy that even the postmaster 
of Austin could serve time in a federal prison for.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like this post could 
be promoting the private enforcing of corrupt "laws" in order to reduce 
the threat of "guilt by association."
 
> Ignorance of the law is no excuse; it is dangerous.  
Funny, but the law seems to have more changing colors than a chameleon.
"In a country where a person must spend 10 years in college to get 
a specialized law degree, ignorance of the law IS the law."

whatever...
 
Disgustedly Yours,
xray