Lawyer nixes filters

[Burt, David]

This Feb 96 article from ARL seems to indicate that exactly what an ISP
is liable for whether it makes an attempt to stop misbehavior or not is
still being decided.  Kinda sounds like you could argue either way.

David

  ***********************************************************
          David Burt, Information Technology Librarian 
          The Lake Oswego Public Library 
          706 Fourth Street, Lake Oswego, OR 97034
          URL:          http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/library/library.htm
          Phone:     (503) 635-0392 
          Fax:           (503) 635-4171 
          E-mail:      dburt at ci.oswego.or.us 


Courts Rule on Online Liability

by Prudence S. Adler, Assistant Executive Director - Federal Relations
and Information
Policy

)ARL: A Bimonthly Newsletter of Research Library Issues and Actions 184
(February 1996).
Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries.

As Congress debates the merits of holding online service providers
liable for certain actions, two
Courts have ruled on cases involving liability for comments posted on a
computerized bulletin board
and for copyright infringement. The New York State Supreme Court for
Nassau County declined to
reverse a ruling against the Prodigy Services Company, affirming that
Prodigy is liable for comments
posted to its service by a subscriber. The decision also noted that the
online service provider did
make some effort to screen out content posted by subscribers and that
the service was a publisher
of information, not just a carrier. In an interesting twist, since the
original ruling, the plaintiff
investment bank and its president have withdrawn their libel suit in
return for an apology by Prodigy.

A federal judge in California has ruled that Netcom may be held liable
for copyright infringement
because the company did not remove copyrighted materials posted by a
subscriber. The judge's
ruling included an important distinction: that Netcom may be liable for
"contributory" copyright
infringement, not direct or vicarious infringement.

The Administration's White Paper on Intellectual Property and the NII,
and the National
Information Infrastructure Copyright Protection Act of 1995 (S. 1284 and
H.R. 2441), include a
proposal that would hold online service providers liable for
subscribers' postings of copyrighted
works without permission.

)ARL: A Bimonthly Newsletter of Research Library Issues and Actions 184
(February 1996).
Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries.