RE: Tired of Waiting

["Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer@mhsc.com>]

At 12:18 PM 7/14/98 -0400, Robert Raisch wrote:
>Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
>> Becasue of the legal morass regarding
>> "Common Carrier" in the US (subject to individual State regulations, etc),
>> we really don't want to go there either.
>
>I concede "common carrier" was a poor choice.  My comments regarding common
>carriage were meant as a illustrative abstraction, not a legal definition.
>Based upon recent law, AOL enjoys a status similar to that of a common
>carrier, since it is legally protected from the data flowing through it.
>This is the characteristic I tried to invoke.

One need not be a "Common Carrier" to enjoy such protections. Indeed, our
service depends on this. There is much legal precedent that exonerates the
ISP, providing that they take suitable measures, from being responsible for
on-line content provided by another party. One of the key tests is
demonstrating that they have no practicable control over content. Another
test is whether or not the content is indicriminately available as a truely
"public" posting. Sheer volume goes a long way to answering the first and
restricted access answers the second.

___________________________________________________ 
Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993) 
e-mail: <mailto:rmeyer@mhsc.com>rmeyer@mhsc.com
Internet phone: hawk.mhsc.com
Personal web pages: <http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer>www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
Company web-site: <http://www.mhsc.com/>www.mhsc.com/
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