Lawyer nixes filters -Reply

[Rich Greenfield]

The lawyer's advice stems from the libel suit decided against Prodigy in partial
summary judement on March 10, 1995
[http://www.gcwf.com/articles/prodigy.htm] and a fuller decision in May 24,
1995.

A New York State court found for the plaintiff, Stratton Oakmont (an
investment bank) because Prodigy had held itself out as a service that
exercised control over content - in distinction to online vendors like
CompuServe that have explicitly abdicated any responsibility over content
(Cubby vs. CompuServe, where CompuServe prevailed)
. 
The  court emphasized that it was Prodigy's own policies, technology and
staffing decisions which made Prodigy a publisher rather than a carrier. These
included: (1) advertising itself as a family bulletin board; (2) utilizing a software
program to screen offensive language; and (3) authorizing bulletin board
system operators to remove offensive user-posted messages.

The full decision is at:

http://www.sun.com/sun-on-net/Business.on.Internet/legal/prodigy.html

In August, Prodigy appealed to the New York State Supreme Court, and the
Interactive Services Association filed an Amicus brief 
[ttp://www.isa.net/pubpol/prodigy/prodigy.html] arguing that online services -
like libraries and booksellers - should not be liable unless they know or have
reason to know about the publication/transmission of allegedly defamatroy
matieral.  

Earlier in the month, Congress amended the Communications Act of 1995 (the
Communications Decency Act) to declare that online service providers should
not be "treated as the publisher or speaker" as far as matieral originating from
thrid parties even if the online services attempt to control (as they now must)
obscene materials.

In October, the parties settled when Prodigy issued an apology to Stratton
Oakmont, though Prodigy reserved its right to seek a rehearing of the lower
(Supreme) court's summary judgement on appeal.

In December, Prodigy lost its motion to rehear when Judge Stuart Ain of the
New York Supreme Court upheld his earlier decision ruling that Prodigy must
either control what people write on Prodigy bulletin board services or face legal
responsibility for any libel committed.


Here are some related links:

http://lawlinks.com/flacom/recent/prodigy.html

http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/print/950731/upfront/doc12.html

http://www.ema.org/html/at_work/prodigy.htm

http://www.webweek.com/96Jan/opinion/prodigy_ruling.html

>>> "Burt, David" <DBurt at ci.oswego.or.us> 04/11/97 12:16pm >>>
Donald Barkley wrote:

> just came back from the Texas Library Association meeting in Fort Worth,
>and while there I attended a program on Internet use policies in
>libraries.  One of the librarians there (school? public?) said that the
>lawyer who vets her library's policies told her not to rely on filtering
>programs on the grounds that if a filtering program fails to weed out the
>bad stuff, the library could be secondarily liable.  Her lawyer said that
>relying on a use policy put them on safer legal ground.  This is, of
>course, the opinion of one lawyer. Other lawyers will probably say just
>the opposite.


I'm no lawyer, but I don't understand how if a library knew about an
undesirable situation in their library, and made a reasonable,
good-faith effort to stop it that fell short, that this would actually
increase their liability, as opposed to doing nothing.

  ***********************************************************
          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