Xref: utzoo news.admin:7701 misc.legal:12358 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl From: karl@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal Subject: Re: Usenet and legal liability Message-ID: Date: 21 Nov 89 15:12:05 GMT References: <25683CAB.25106@ateng.com> <10771@max.u.washington.edu> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Followup-To: news.admin,misc.legal Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 38 wcn@max.u.washington.edu writes: ...the offended party can sue the institution, as the article's publisher, rather than the alleged author. Transport level security holes aside, it's still possible to prove distribution, so this University, for example, could be held liable. No, you can't prove distribution. You miss entirely the point that a forgery, a really good forgery, wouldn't even appear to have come from its genuine source. If I were intending to forge the posting of someone's proprietary source code, I would see to it that the posting appeared to come from, oh, say, UCSD, or UTexas, or Rutgers, or... The transport security holes are so large that the real originating site can be completely unidentifiable. It may look like it came from UIUC, but it could just as easily have really come from RPI. The issue of proving authorship is _much_ larger and more difficult than simply saying, "the article came from Over-There.EDU!" Most importantly, the Usenet admin at Over-There.EDU will be most anxious to point out that the offending article didn't come from his site, shown by the Usenet and NNTP/UUCP logs. *poof* Not a leg to stand on. You can't _prove_ a thing - not even an article's point of origin. Furthermore, an individual can't wait until a libel suit goes to trial before shouting "forgery". A bogus article must be disclaimed at first opportunity, otherwise authorship may be implicitly assumed. A good forgery of this type wouldn't claim to come from a real individual in the first place. No human would have to disclaim forgery; the article would claim to have come from John_Smith@Over-There.EDU, when no John_Smith exists there. --Karl