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From: isaac@mulga.OZ (Isaac Balbin)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Towards making hosts and their admin free from a criminal offence
Message-ID: <1234@mulga.OZ>
Date: Mon, 12-May-86 02:18:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: mulga.1234
Posted: Mon May 12 02:18:03 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 14-May-86 07:05:20 EDT
Organization: Comp Sci, Melbourne Uni, Australia
Lines: 21

I don't think this has been discussed, but if it has, I apologise.
The international flavour of the net makes it all the more important
to ensure that software is general enough to deal with differing 
situations. Consider a user who posts an article (be it locally
or world-wide) the material of which, might be considered to be a 
criminal offence in some country. For example, some countries might
be more explicit in their outlawing of electronic-cum-printed
matter which is racist. We cannot know all the little laws and loopholes,
however, there seems to be a very simple change which should be made
to postnews, and Pnews to protect administrators, universities etc
who *might* be considered promulgators and publishers of such material.
Each country will have its own law, lawmakers etc but if we put in a question
like  (maybe different words)
"Do you accept the fact that if the material in your article is 
considered illegal in any country which it reaches, it is entirely your
responsibility, and your undertaking etc ... [y/n]?"
If the answer given is "no", then the program should not proceed.
I do realise that it is HIGHLY unlikely that someone would act against
someone (moreso unlikely if that person was in another country!)
Nevertheless, this idea seems good to me - what do you think? Lawyer types?
				Isaac Balbin