🚀 go-pugleaf

lalee@vcn.bc.ca (Lawrence Lee) wrote:

>I would ask you Robert why Usenet newsgroups are any more illegal than 
>the content that can be achieved via. gopher, FTP, IRC, telnet, WWW... 

It is not the newsgroups that are illegal.  It is the material that is
distributed in such newsgroups that is likely to be illegal. Canadian
law cannot control what happens on foreign servers.  But it can
legislate what any person in Canada has in their possession.  

You may not agree with what the Parliament have decided, but they sure
as shotin' do have the powers to make that decision.  At least until
somebody challenges them in court on it.  Do you want to be that hero?

While the ThinkPolice realizes it is damned near impossible for them
to snoop out any private person who downloads kiddie smut from any
site in the world, they can (and would love to) nail folks who
distribute it within Canada.

It's a question of most effect with the least effort.  I don't think
there is an ISP in the country that would be stupid enough to set
themselves up as an inviting target for the gendarmerie.

>Is iStar taking this action on newsgroups because they are somehow 
>liable in distributing Internet access? If so, they better close shop... 

>I think that the willingness of iStar to hide their actions to be even 
>more disturbing. If iStar found some telnet sites to be illegal, will 
>they without notice just begin to remove access. 

No, I don't think the issue is one of providing access.  It is more
like what stuff is present on their own news server.  It would take
considerable effort to prove that providing access to internet equals
distributing smut, when the questionable material sits in a machine
half a world away.  But it takes no genius to take a server off line
and look at what's on the hard drive.  

If any of that stuff falls within the legal definition of child porn,
you're toast, so is your equipment, kiss your entire business good
bye, you're lucky if the Crown prosecutor does not go to town on you
and demand the max 5 years in Club Fed.  Of course, once you do get
into Crowbar Hotel and the word spreads why you're there (average
distribution time = 5 minutes after your arrival), it won't be any
picnic for you either.

Why would any ISP risk any of it?  For a lousy $20/month? I don't
think so.


Karl Pollak               FidoNet 1:153/965
Richmond, B.C.            Canadian Infomaticon BBS