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From: era@hao.UUCP (Ed Arnold)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate,net.legal
Subject: stargate liability issues
Message-ID: <2054@hao.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Apr-86 12:57:56 EST
Article-I.D.: hao.2054
Posted: Wed Apr 16 12:57:56 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Apr-86 22:17:24 EST
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Organization: Nat'l Center for Atmospheric Research
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Xref: decwrl net.news.stargate:201 net.legal:3493

I'm hoping answers to the questions I'm posing here have previously
been posted to the stargate group, and one of you can answer them in
short order.

These questions are on the liability issues relating to Stargate.  At the
Dallas Usenix conference (Jan. 85), Lauren Weinstein's talk was followed
by a discussion of liability issues from Susan Nycum of the law firm of
Gaston Snow & Ely Bartlett.  That talk wasn't published in the Proceedings,
but the gist of the talk was that there are serious liability problems with
Stargate which stem from the legal differences between a "common carrier"
and a "broadcaster".  Four letter words are ok when using a common carrier,
but not ok when using a broadcaster - even when the "broadcaster" is a
subcarrier on a satellite tv channel.

My questions are:

1) Has there been any progress in the legal arena to resolve the problem?
2) Is there any technical solution, e.g. message body encryption, which
   can get around the legalities?  Certain broadcasters (both atmospheric
   and cable) have used scrambling devices to make controversial materials,
   such as X-rated channels, inaccessible to the general public, which
   appears (to me, a legal novice) to be a method of legally transforming a 
   broadcast channel into a common carrier.  Does anyone know the *legal*
   reason why encryption is *not* a solution to the Stargate liability
   problem?

Thanks for your assistance ...
-- 

Ed Arnold * NCAR (Nat'l Center for Atmospheric Research)
PO Box 3000 * Boulder, CO  80307-3000 * 303-497-1253
era@ncar.csnet * era%ncar@csnet-relay.arpa * ...!hao!scdpyr!era