Xref: utzoo news.admin:7731 misc.legal:12385 Path: utzoo!censor!dybbuk!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal Subject: Re: Usenet and legal liability Message-ID: <1766@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Date: 22 Nov 89 15:51:00 GMT References: <25683CAB.25106@ateng.com> <10771@max.u.washington.edu> <10814@max.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Followup-To: news.admin Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY Lines: 30 In article <10814@max.u.washington.edu> wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr) writes: | NO! Class action lawsuits forced the USPS to grant consumers the right to | refuse junk mail, in particular sexually explicit mail. The USPS is liable if | they deliver something in the face of a written customer refusal. It is my | understanding that litigation is pending against the phone companies on this | same issue, in the context of computer-generated "junk phone calls". What's the connection? Have you given a written request to your feed not to send you a group? If they refuse to take the group out of their sys file have you taken it out of yours? If you want your feed to provide article by article censoring I'm sure you can get a Clarinet feed somewhere, or that your current feed will be willing to do it (by removing your site from their sys file). Sites DO warn users, or even remove their privileges. Sites DO stop taking or giving feeds to other sites. But since YOU have control over what comes in, on YOUR site, there is not a good analogy to the USPS. You can stop incoming news yourself, while the USPS will keep coming unless they take action. BTW: the USPS will not let you ask to stop getting bills or summons because you feel they are "obscene." They will stop someone from mailing to you by threat of legal action, but that's not the same thing as opening and evaluating each letter. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon