🚀 go-pugleaf

bladex@bga.com (David Smith) wrote:

>First, Internet service providers are not common carriers, have never been 
>common carriers, and given the current debate over telecommunications, 
>will probably never be common carriers.

Of course they will never be common carriers:  the lawyers and the state
instinctively realize this would be too simple, too successful, of a solution.
It is better to keep people guessing/worried.  Because in the end *fear* is
the source of all power of one group over another.

>Second, my opinion is that ISPs who offer a partial .newsrc file do not 
>incur greater legal liability than those who offer a full .newsrc file.  
>There is no law that says one must carry a full feed; one may pick and 
>choose as one desires. It's only when you drop to the level of individual 
>messages that your liability for the content increases.

If you aren't running a full feed for reasons beyond your control, or
simply because you don't want to waste bandwidth or disk space, thats one
thing.

However, iSTAR's stated position is that it is the the *newsgroups*
which are illegal.  That is, despite all logic, they appear to be insisting
that the wrapper is illegal, not just any potentially illegal content.

Regardless if this position holds, their censorship of the lawyer-proscribed
newsgroups is a form of editorial control.  All that is needed is for exactly
one (1) violation of Sacred Law to slip through and land on their disks,
followed by a quick call to the RCMP, and it's game over.

Or maybe not, since another of iSTAR's (bizarre) positions is that attempts
to work-around their censorship is (gasp!) Officially Disapproved:

>>>If you wanted to use iSTAR's network to access content that would be
>>>illegal to have possession of, then YES. We would disapprove of that.

Only in a lawyers mind could such a scheme be devised; iSTAR can enjoy
the powers of control, but the responsibilities when 'control' fails
can be punted to the users -- account termination, fine, jail, death, etc.