Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!decvax!ima!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Geosat transmission of news
Message-ID: <17@minya.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jun 89 14:46:24 GMT
References: <371@odi.ODI.COM> <3400@looking.on.ca> <3549@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <737@corpane.UUCP>
Organization: (none)
Lines: 41

In article <737@corpane.UUCP>, sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) writes:
> In article <3413@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
> >Yet the message, "You may transmit this only if your recipients may" is
> >very similar to "you may transmit this to your system only if you don't
> >deny anybody access to it on your system."   The former was accepted, the
> >latter sounds silly.
> The two statements above are *not* similar. 

In any case, can anyone give any legal argument (quoting laws and/or
cases) that either is anything other than silly?  After all, they seem
to require that the (highly-automated) news-forwarding software contain
code that can spot such statements, decode them, understand the English,
and take appropriate action.  This is clearly far beyond the capability
of any AI software currently on the market, much less the usenet package.
Considering the international nature of usenet, they would also seem to
require similar decoding and understanding in at least all of the major
languages of the world.

Or are you perhaps suggesting that news (and mail) forwarding should be 
done only after each article has been reviewed for copyright restrictions 
by the machine's owner's copyright lawyer?  This would of course totally
and permanently shut down all email and file transfer packages....

Such requirements are rather like expecting that a copier understand 
and obey copyright notices in the material being copied.  This is not
a legal issue at all, even when the copyright notice is on the page
being copied; when it is on another page in the same document, it is
even sillier.  Anyone know of a relevant case?  (Please don't tell me 
about cases where a person/organization was held responsible for the
copying; I'm asking about cases that imply that a machine should refuse 
to make a copy based a document's contents.)

Perhaps, until the issue is resolved unambiguously by the Supreme Court
(World Court?), or valid AI filtering software has been developed, I 
should take the prudent course of not allowing any forwarding of mail 
or news on this machine....

-- 
--
All opinions Copyright 1989 by John Chambers; for licensing information contact:
	John Chambers <{adelie,ima,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)