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Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: news.stargate
Subject: Re: A modest proposal
Message-ID: <7877@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Apr-87 20:56:52 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7877
Posted: Sat Apr  4 20:56:52 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Apr-87 20:56:52 EST
References: <748@xanth.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 19

> I don't know if this will help or hurt, but a few thousand articles per week
> including the last part of my .signature should certainly discourage the
> stargate folks from acting as anything but a common carrier.  If they need
> licensing for such, let them go through the application process...

Why can't people understand that it is not *up* to Stargate whether they
are considered a common carrier or not?  There is *no* *way* to just
fill out a form and become, in law, a common carrier.  If you act exactly
like a phone company, you are a common carrier.  If you act exactly like
a publisher or a radio broadcaster, you are not.  If you act like something
in between, like Stargate, *nobody* *knows* which you are.  The FCC does
not have the power to declare you a common carrier!  Congress does, but
that is (a) difficult, and (b) fraught with risk that they might legislate
something entirely different once they get the bit between their teeth.
In the absence of legislative action, the only way you could find out is
in court, at great expense and considerable risk of the wrong result.
-- 
"We must choose: the stars or	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
the dust.  Which shall it be?"	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry