Xref: utzoo news.admin:7738 misc.legal:12387 Path: utzoo!censor!dybbuk!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mstar!mstar.morningstar.com!bob From: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal Subject: Re: Usenet and legal liability Message-ID: Date: 22 Nov 89 17:50:16 GMT References: <25683CAB.25106@ateng.com> <10771@max.u.washington.edu> <10814@max.u.washington.edu> Sender: news@MorningStar.COM (USENET Administrator) Reply-To: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) Followup-To: news.admin,misc.legal Organization: Morning Star Technologies Lines: 31 In-reply-to: wcn@max.u.washington.edu's message of 21 Nov 89 23:40:56 GMT In article <10814@max.u.washington.edu> wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr) writes: From: karl@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) 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. [technical info deleted] OK, I'll speak more slowly. There's no need to get condescending. You cannot prove >origin<, but you can prove >distribution<. The fact that a copy of your article sits on my disk proves that distribution occured. Because of the same problems that render you unable to prove that it's my article, you also can't prove that it originated anywhere other than on your disk. Therefore, you can't prove distribution. Since we get our feeds from exactly one source, the NSFnet backbone, it can be proven that NSF acted as a distributor of any problematic articles we may have received. Since you have no way to prove whether it ever existed anywhere else besides on your disk, you have no way to prove whether it has traveled, nor whether it passed over any given transport. Yes, article forgeries may become more common and less skillful. But the very ease with which they can be done has so far removed the challenge, and therefore the motivation. I'm not too worried.