🚀 go-pugleaf

Yello Biennual (bdb@GTS.Net) wrote:
: In article <EvMM2B.Izp.0.sheppard@torfree.net>,
: Jim Butterfield <fjb@torfree.net> wrote:
: |Randy Wittchen (wittchen@direct.ca) wrote:
: |
: |:                                         ...    Industry Canada has
: |: produced a report which looks at potential criminal and civil liability
: |: for persons posting to Usenet and website content as well as potential
: |: liability for ISP's.  This should be required reading for any officer or
: |: director of an ISP.
: |
: |Thanks, Randy.  Your comments are useful.  I believe I've already made 
: |reference to the Industry Canada document.
: |
: |The directors of the TFN would be well advised to read it, if they have 
: |not done so already.  If they find they disagree with it, they should 
: |seek legal advice, since the document was prepared by persons with 
: |substantial legal expertise.
: |
: |I'm not a director, just a TFN member.  But I sincerely hope that the 
: |directors, and the TFN, do not run into serious difficulty by adopting 
: |the belief that "inaction will keep us safe".  This past week, "Jane Doe" 
: |collected $220,000 from the Toronto Police because they did not take 
: |action to warn her of a rapist who was active in the region.  Not the 
: |same thing, of course, but it does point out that inaction will not get 
: |you off the hook.

: 	More irrelevant sensationalism.  Your example
: 	has *nothing* to do with what we are discussing.

It has some bearing.

: 	Let's look at 2 parts of the Industry Canada
: 	document for a second.  The first is the intro
: 	to the whole thing:

: Internet Content-Related Liability Study

: The views expressed in this Study are those of the authors and do not
: necessarily reflect government policy.

Standard CYA for a study done under contract.  It doesn't necessarily 
*not* represent government policy, either.  And the weight of the study 
depends on the qualifications of the authors.

: 	The second is the conclusion to the Liability
: 	section:

: However, in the present state of the law, it remains difficult to
: distinguish the circumstances in which an access provider should
: act to prevent prejudice from those situations which do not present
: a sufficiently clear case to justify an intervention which often
: could result in severe censorship. Without having access to the
: viewpoints of all those involved, it is indeed very difficult to
: determine whether a specific content is actionable. The access
: provider thus finds itself in the uncomfortable position of being
: criticized at some point for having permitted a content harming a
: person to circulate, when it is really very poorly placed to
: intervene in order to suppress a content of which the harmful
: nature is often far from obvious. Moreover, the principle of
: freedom of expression as it is understood in democratic societies
: concords poorly with practices in which access providers would
: pass judgment on the potentially actionable or harmful nature
: of information passing through their facilities. 

Translation:  There are grey areas, and folks have to be very careful.
But there are also fairly clear-cut cases, and that is what Jim has noted 
as a potential area of liability (as does the study in question).

Current TFN "policy" would have us wait until a court comes to us for any 
action to be taken; the study seems to suggest that this is unreasonable 
and may result in liability where a clear violation has occurred (this 
does assume it is "clear," e.g., a death threat).

Ken
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