Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!rochester!ritcv!cci632!ccird1!rb From: rb@ccird1.UUCP (Rex Ballard) Newsgroups: net.news,net.politics,net.legal Subject: Towards making hosts and their admin free from a criminal offence Message-ID: <432@ccird1.UUCP> Date: Tue, 3-Jun-86 19:29:25 EDT Article-I.D.: ccird1.432 Posted: Tue Jun 3 19:29:25 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 5-Jun-86 20:06:44 EDT References: <611@bu-cs.UUCP> <164@comp.lancs.ac.uk> <20663@styx.UUCP> <1259@mulga.OZ> <2026@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> <880@frog.UUCP> Reply-To: rb@ccird1.UUCP (Rex Ballard) Distribution: net Organization: CCI Rochester Development, Rochester NY Lines: 87 Xref: linus net.news:4107 net.politics:15772 net.legal:3214 Summary: Graffiti Board There are several different views that could be taken with reguard to usenet and BBS's in general. 1: Usenet, et al are "mail boxes" which the reciever chooses to read. In this case, within the if the reader is offended by something said in a group, he can "unsubscribe". The "mail" groups are very much like this, but usenet is a little more "public". 2: Boards are "party-line common carriers", again the parties involved can send a great deal of information which the reader "chooses" to "listen to". If you think homosexuality is obscene, then you don't subscribe to motss. The reason the "call me for obscene conversation" numbers are not illegal is because the obscenity is requested by the caller. 3: Boards are "news media". This is definately NOT the case. News media are managed by Editorial staff which monitors both the quality and the content of what is published. In some ways, the division into many groups provides some editorial management, but only the "mod" groups are really editorially managed. 4: Boards are "Bulletin boards". This would be very similar to the boards seen at many shopping centers and grocery stores. Again however, someone can quickly examine the board and find/remove offensive notices. This is not the case with boards which may recieve >4 million lines of new information per day. 5: Boards are "Bathroom Walls" or graffiti boards. This is the least flattering, but most accurate description. At one time, it was quite trivial for me to post as guest, post as another account, switch to a non-existent machine, change to/from lines, or otherwise post anonymously. A system admin would have a hard time protecting his machine from someone who changed his "from" line. Currently, all of these approaches have been discussed. Eventually, there may be a number of different legal types of "boards". Compuserve may be legally different than usenet which may be different than the "background bbs" running on someone's CoCo. What could be done to insure that the net is innoffensive as possible? To begin with, the information in net.announce.newusers is one of the most important. Ideally, that should be the only "default" group that can be read without specifically "subscribing" to it. This group includes postings which describe, in detail what types of information you might be interested in, or want to avoid. Groups should be very specific. For example, if net.singles starts getting some "kinky" topics, it might be appropriate to have a net.singles.kinks group to get that type of thing out of the more general group. Net.general shouldn't even exist, because it is too easy for someone to put something really offensive in that group and the unsuspecting reader could accidentally read it. Cross postings shouldn't be possible. Instead, the posting should be put in one catagory and a "see also" message could be put in the others, which would show the heading and offer the user the opportunity to "call" that article if desired. Anybody should be able to "Kill" an article which is clearly in violation of their confidentiality. Personally, I am suprised at the number of people who put their home phone #, personal mail address, and even social security number on their signature lines. I gave my address once in a technical group and got more junk mail than I had recieved in years. Of course, if someone were to put my VISA number on every restroom wall in town, unless they were actually caught in the act of putting it there, I would have little recourse, except to get a new card. Even if the merchant were to paint over it, there might be some other commode wall that had that number painted on it. Strange as it may seem, even usenet is a controlled distribution. If some company chooses to broadcast their BBS contents over the airwaves, then additional security measures should be taken. But for "common carrier" distributed nets, the componant users should be thought of as "gossip networks" ala the old "party line" phones. Looking for legal infractions that might occur on usenet or any other BBS is a little like looking for a needle in a grain silo. The offensive matter may only be 10 or 20 bytes per billion.