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From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Towards making hosts and their admin free from a criminal offence
Message-ID: <2190@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Jun-86 00:30:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2190
Posted: Mon Jun  2 00:30:30 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Jun-86 00:31:14 EDT
References: <611@bu-cs.UUCP> <164@comp.lancs.ac.uk> <20663@styx.UUCP> <1261@mulga.OZ> <434@weitek.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Oh
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There may be precedent here.  Surely there are communications satelites
used for TV, radio, etc, in Europe.  Surely the footprint of these birds
is bigger than the country they are aimed at.

For example, a French satelite might broadcast TV which is legal in France,
but which can be picked up by anybody with a dish in Germany, Holland, etc.
I can imagine that a French program might violate some law in Germany.
I can also imagine that (a) a German citizen might pick it up directly,
or (b) a German TV station might pick it up and broadcast a piece on
the local evening news.  If this is illegal, who is at fault, and what
is done?

Another possible analogy is ham radio (I think I like this one, it's
pretty close.)  What is the European law/custom here?  If a ham in
Germany hears something from France which is illegal in Germany and
relays it into Germany, what happens?

Finally, I can think of things like the Voice of America, which broadcasts
things which are obviously illegal in Russia, but aimed right at them.
There isn't anything the Soviets can do about that, except try to jam
it with technical means.

I suspect the answer may be that if there is a person in the loop, that
person acts as a moderator (e.g. the TV news or ham relay.)  But if there
is no person involved - everybody gets everything automatically, there is
nothing that can be done.  A third case is Usenet, where there is a computer
in the country in question in the loop, but no person moderating everything.

I wouldn't worry too much about this.  It's possible to post illegal things
in the USA too, such as a credit card number, slander/libel, something
which is copyrighted, or pornography.  We make all reasonable attempts to
make sure people don't violate their local laws by posting such things,
but we don't have a filter in every state to evaluate local standards
of pornography.

	Mark