🚀 go-pugleaf

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

>[...].  Publishers are; they can't get out of (say) an
>obscenity charge just by claiming that they didn't know what their staff
>was doing.  They are legally obliged to pay attention and make sure that
>they publish no illegal material.
[...]

At least in the U.S., the law distinguishs between a "Publishers", who
have editorial control on material, and "Distributors/Faciliators",
who do not. An example of a publisher is a newspaper. Examples of
distributors and faciliators are books stores, printers, and
auditorium owners.  Publishers are reponsible for material;
distributors/faciliators generally are not. This protection comes from
the general right of freedom of expression (as protected by the First
Amendment); it does not depend on legislated previleges ala "common
carriers".

- Carl

ANNOTATED REFERENCES

(All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.)

=================
law/cubby-v-compuserv
=================
* Expression -- Liability -- Cubby v. Compuserv

Report of a federal district court case which said CompuServe could
not be held liable for the defamatory content because it exercised no
editorial control.

=================
law/student-publications.misc
=================
* Expression -- Offensive -- Student Publications -- Misc

Quotes from the book _Law of the Student Press_ by the Student Press
Law Center (1985,1988). They say that four-letter words are protected
speech, that public universities are not likely to be liable for
publications that they for which they do not control the contents, and
that the _Hazelwood_ decision does not apply to universities.

=================
=================

If you have gopher, you can browse the CAF archive with the command
   gopher gopher.eff.org

These document(s) are also available by anonymous ftp (the preferred
method) and by email. To get the file(s) via ftp, do an anonymous ftp
to ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4), and get file(s):

  pub/academic/law/cubby-v-compuserv
  pub/academic/law/student-publications.misc

To get the file(s) by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org.
Include the line(s) (be sure to include the space before the file
name):

send acad-freedom/law cubby-v-compuserv
send acad-freedom/law student-publications.misc


-- 
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign