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From: desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Congress is now debating the future of Usenet
Message-ID: <15341@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Wed, 20-Aug-86 06:19:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.15341
Posted: Wed Aug 20 06:19:25 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Aug-86 00:55:58 EDT
References: <1632@well.UUCP> <1013@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <1013@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>Many people probably missed lll-crg!well!tenney's offer to email a copy of
>the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  
>
>It appears to put legal liability on Usenet hosts which forward mail or
>news for other hosts, and could alter or destroy the current structure
>of Usenet (and/or Stargate).
>
>This bill, S.2575 [...] makes you legally responsible for the carriage
>of email unless you run a "public access" system.

   I'd just like to interject my own observations here.  I strongly agree
with John's suggestion that you read the bill for yourself (many thanks
to him for making it available, at least to those of us with ARPA access).
It is in fact very easy to read.

   Unfortunately, I can't find anything in it to substantiate John's claims
above.  The first claim (that it "puts legal liability on Usenet hosts")
is very imprecise, which of course makes it hard to refute, but in my
reading of the text I could find nothing that seems to me likely to affect
the normal operation of any Usenet host.  The word "liability" does not
appear in the text.
   The second claim, that you are "legally responsible for the carriage of
email unless you run a 'public access' system" is also unclear -- is this
supposed to mean liable to the sender for its delivery, or liable for
things like libel and copyright violation, or liable to someone else for
something else altogether?  In any case I could find nothing to this effect
in the bill, and the words "public access" also do not appear.

   Let me make clear that I am not denying John's claims.  I am simply
stating that I could not see how they were justified by the text of the
bill.  It is not impossible that either I overlooked a major provision,
or that the claims above are implied rather than explicitly stated (for
example, if by amending the previous law Usenet hosts are to be subjected
to existing law from which they were previously exempt).
   Perhaps John or one of the other people who have posted about this act
can explain how the claims above are derived from the text of the act.
Quotes from the bill itself, or at least references to speicfic sections,
would help us resolve exactly what it is that the bill would do.

   Frankly, while I understand that time is somewhat short, I think it is
important that we should be clear on the exact implications of the bill
before we jump off into mass letter-writing and phone calls.  Both because
it is possible that the impact of the bill has been exaggerated, and because
a careful examination of the bill, if it upholds the claims that have been
made, would certainly encourage many more people to protest to their elected
representatives (myself, for one).

   -- David desJardins