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From: ricker@bunker.UUCP (ricker)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.politics,net.legal
Subject: Re: Towards making hosts and their admin free from a criminal offence
Message-ID: <1188@bunker.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Jun-86 13:01:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: bunker.1188
Posted: Mon Jun  9 13:01:40 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Jun-86 00:18:08 EDT
References: <611@bu-cs.UUCP> <164@comp.lancs.ac.uk>
Reply-To: ricker@bunker.UUCP (ricker)
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In article <597@chalmers.UUCP> jacob@chalmers.UUCP (Jacob Hallen) writes:
>In article <880@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP writes:
>>
>>As a practical matter, it cannot be illegal in some other country for me to
>>sit here in Somerville, Massachusetts, USA and say something distasteful to
>>a foreign lawmaker.  
>
>If you say it on the net you are in fact publishing your statement in every
>country that the net is distributed to.

The poster is not directly publishing his or her article. The poster is
submitting it to the net to be published.

>Also, you are the only one who can be held responsible. To hold a host
>responsible would be as absurd as to hold US Mail responsible if you sent
>your statement by ordinary mail.
>
>Jacob Hallen

The comparison of USENET and U.S. Mail is not correct in this context. USENET
is more like publishing or other broadcast media. The national gateway only 
receives one copy of a posted article. That gateway then assumes the
responsibility of broadcasting copies of the article. It may be that
international law holds the originator responsible for sending illegal materials
(I don't know I'm not a lawyer), but I would think any law would have to hold
the local receiver/diseminator responsible as well.

Anyway, this whole discussion points up the stupidity of censorship. Could you
imagine how much more slowly ideas would be shared, if our governments had not
allowed a single byte of these discussions be transmitted until they had come
up with the "perfect" information control policy?