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From: ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate,net.legal
Subject: Re: stargate liability issues
Message-ID: <334@ius2.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 18-Apr-86 14:57:53 EST
Article-I.D.: ius2.334
Posted: Fri Apr 18 14:57:53 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Apr-86 20:12:31 EST
References: <2054@hao.UUCP>
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Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
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Xref: gatech net.news.stargate:217 net.legal:3280

In article <2054@hao.UUCP> era@hao writes:
>My questions are:
>
>1) Has there been any progress in the legal arena to resolve the problem?
Not to my knowledge - it will take a test case to determine if encryption, 
for example really does give one common carrier status.  On the other hand,
the courts and Congress seem to want to treat Cellular Phone systems as 
common carriers, even though there is no encryption.

>2) Is there any technical solution, e.g. message body encryption, which
>   can get around the legalities?  Certain broadcasters... have used
>   scrambling ... which appears to be a method of legally transforming a 
>   broadcast channel into a common carrier.

MIT is using encryption with an FM subcarrier research project, more to
protect the information being transmitted than for liability reasons, but
certain lawyers felt that encryption would give more credence to the assertion
that we were a common carrier or private radio station rather than a
broadcaster.

This probably won't get settled until somebody gets sued and there is a court
decision.  Problem is, nobody wants to stick their necks out, so there's no
knowledge of how far one can go...
-- 
					- Ralph W. Hyre, Jr.

Internet: ralphw@c.cs.cmu.edu (cmu-cs-c.arpa)	Usenet: ralphw@mit-eddie.uucp
Fido: Ralph Hyre at Net 129, Node 0 (Pitt-Bull) Phone: (412)CMU-BUGS