🚀 go-pugleaf

[ott.general removed from newsgroups line as ott.online covers the
same territory.  if someone feels ott.general is should get this,
please repost there.]
On 27 Nov 1996 07:06:27 GMT, ag414@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R.
Leech) wrote:

>
>David Jones (djones@insight.mcmaster.ca) writes:
>> IGS accused an innocent person of committing a crime.
>
>They had reasonable grounds for believing that the page might be illegal:
>i.e. the fact that the police were calling the page illegal. They were
>simply being prudent by disassociating themselves from being potential
>accomplices to the crime.

Landlords are not guilty by association when one of their tenants
commits a crime.  Phone companies are not guilty by association when
one of their customers utters threats over the phone.  In both cases
the argument is between the alleged perpetrator, the alleged victims
and the police.  

Perhaps more apropos to a free speech case, universities are not
guilty by association when one of their profs makes controversial
statements - thats why they have tenure.  The web is like a worldwide
educational institution in which everyone has the right to publish
their views openly.  If an ISP really wants to dissociate itself from
a particular set of views, or present a balanced view, why not simply
publish all the complaints they got?

In the IGS case, the lawyers *and* police advised IGS that they were
not sure there was any crime.  IMO, IGS should have done no more than
provide user account details to police, and that only if they were
asked to.

>
>It was a business decision, plain and simple. If you were running a
>daycare and somebody accused one of your employees of being a child
>molester, wouldn't you suspend him until he was either convicted or
>cleared? Otherwise you open yourself up to a lot of potential headache.

Colin was not an employee of IGS - which was merely carrying one of
his web pages.  Further, unlike your example, no one under IGS care
(or anywhere else for that matter) was in any danger.  IGS have opened
themselves to more headaches by effectively declaring they are
responsible for monitoring the content of all web pages on their
server.

>
>If you don't like their decision, you can always change to a different ISP.

Given the trend to large worldwide ISPs, this may not be possible much
longer.  As government privatisation continues, corporate political
correctness becomes as important as government censorship.